Can OpenStreetMap replace Google Earth?

Question

I need to build a website which needs to perform the following tasks:

1. Display a web map with topographical details
2. On the map show a set of selected streets
3. When a street is selected show a set of points of interest on that street

The constraints are:

1. Ruby on Rails as a programming language

2. Everything in the stack must be open source

   I've given an interested look at OpenStreetMap will it work for the needed tasks?

EDIT

Actually there is a product using Google Earth in this company but they want to change it due to its commercial cost.

Answer 1

If you don't need satellite imagery or 3D stuff it's possible with a combination of:

• OSM data imported in Postgresql/Postgis (via osm2pgsql)
• Mapnik used to render map tiles
• OpenLayers used to display the web map (serving tiles rendered by Mapnik)
• some Javascript middleware (ExtJS) to facilitate retrieving data as required by vector layers and build UI components
• some server side component (Ruby on Rails based if required) that queries the Postgis/Postgresql database for features (i.e. geometry of selected streets, nearby POIs).

We have an application built on top of the above at gis.modulo.ro that shows mountain hiking trails from OpenStreetMap (server side is Java based).

Note: You can do some 3D stuff by integrating altitude profiles (NASA srtm) with the OpenStreetMap data.

Answer 2

Your first requirement is that you should be able to

Display a web map with topographical details

This won't be that easy with open street maps. With google maps, the 'terrain' view is good enough to show basic topographical details.

With Open street maps, you'll have to have your own server which serves topographical data.