Panoramax

Panoramax
The panoramax logo, showing a stylised street view
Type of site
Crowdsourcing of street-level imagery
Country of originFrance
URLpanoramax.fr
CommercialNo
Users1613 contributors

Panoramax is a project to collect and display street-level imagery, implemented as free and open source software. It allows the crowdsourcing of images, which are then openly licensed. The project was started in 2022 by the French National Geographic Institute (Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière, IGN) and the French OpenStreetMap (OSM) chapter, and was initially designed and developed by a state-owned start-up. Panoramax is updated and maintained by a community of volunteers and IGN staff.

As a free and open source alternative to Google Street View, all components of the Panoramax infrastructure are openly licensed.[1] Panoramax is a federated system that allows individuals and organizations to host their own instances for image hosting. As of 2025, six Panoramax instances were online, beyond the initial two run by IGN & OSM France, including instances for Taiwan and Wales.

History

In 2021, OpenStreetMap France responded to an IGN consultation on "geocommons"[2] proposing the creation of an open database for street-level images.[3] In April 2022, as part of its "Geocommons Factory", the IGN picked OSM's proposal as one of three projects to be developed, and launched a call for partners.[4][5]

Panoramax was launched in October 2022.[6] The name "Panoramax" was decided upon after a proposal phase and vote by 48 community members.[7][8][9][10] It was initially envisioned as a tool to respond to problems encountered by local authorities and other French stakeholders, such as updating inventories of street furniture and road infrastructure.[11][12]

By April 2024, 284 contributors had provided 17.7 million photos, including citizen volunteers, companies (Suez & Véolia) and local communities such as Greater Lyon, Strasbourg.[13][14][15][16] In June 2024, Panoramax won a grant by the NLnet Foundation as part of the NGI0 Commons Fund, which is supported by the European Commission as part of the Next Generation Internet program.[17] In the same year, the project also gained more media attention, especially in public and private French-speaking media, including Franceinfo,[18] France Bleu,[19] Europe 1[20] and ZDNet.[21]

In April 2026, the federation of Panoramax instances reached a total of over 100 million uploaded images.[22] At the end of the same month, the French OpenStreetMap chapter announced that their instance, which until then accepted imagery from anywhere in the world for testing purposes, would have to limit itself to only accepting imagery from French territories due to storage constraints,[23] and started a crowdfunding campaign for the third birthday of the instance's existence.[24] At the same time, further Panoramax instances started, bringing the total number of public instances to 12, including by the Croatian OSM group[25] and an instance in Argentina.[26]

The project's budget is €500,000, and 6 people work on the project.[27][failed verification][as of?]

Images

Taking pictures from a boat.

Panoramax accepts both 360-degree and flat photos, which are usually submitted as part of a sequence showing progression along an outdoor route. As of May 24, 2026, over 105 million images have been added by more than 2100 contributors across 12 instances.[28]

Open licensing

Images hosted and published using the software are openly licensed and allow the free re-use of the images,[27] unlike proprietary projects such as Google Street View, which are controlled by Google and thus largely prevent the re-use of images.[29][30]

Images can be published under various open licenses. The OSM France instance uses Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0, with an added authorization to generate non-photographic data under an open database license (ODbL).[7][31][27][13] The French IGN instance publishes images using the etalab-2.0 license ("Licence Ouverte").[7][27][13]

Contributing to Panoramax

Equipment on a car.

There are multiple ways to contribute and access images, including via an instance's website, command-line interface or API, as well as a mobile application.[32] During the import, each uploaded photo is subjected to image recognition to identify parts of the image that should be anonymized (i.e. blurring faces and license plates), to comply with the privacy regulations such as the French CNIL.[33]

Software and infrastructure

Panoramax is a federated system that allows individuals and organizations to set up their own instances for image hosting. Instances are listed in the Panoramax meta-catalog to allow access to their images across the whole federation. All components of the Panoramax infrastructure are openly licensed.[34]

API

An API allows downloading and searching for images, for example to distribute them to tools such as viewers. It is based on the STAC standard, to ensure interoperability with existing tools.[35]

The API also allows third parties to serve as applications for uploading and/or displaying images. For example, the iD and JOSM editors for OpenStreetMap can display images from Panoramax to support mapping, as can OSM-based navigation apps.

There is also a growing list of applications that can be used to upload images to Panoramax instances, including MapComplete, Vespucci and Baba.[36]

Use cases

Use cases include being able to monitor conditions of the roads and street furniture, signs, trees, overhead cables, or to verify compliance with regulations on advertising displays.[27][16][15][29] The departmental fire and rescue service ("service départemental d’incendie et de secours) uses Panoramax to map fire hydrants and tracks that can be used in cases of wildfires.[27][37]

The images provided by Panoramax are also widely used in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) ecosystem, both for mapping and products based on OSM data. For example, the iD OSM editor supports overlaying Panoramax images to help during mapping, as well as cross-linking Panoramax images to OSM objects.[38] Similarly, OSM-based map applications and websites such as Cartes.app support either linking out to web-based Panoramax viewers or can directly display the images in-app.

A photograph provides useful information for a variety of purposes.

References

  1. ^ "Panoramax · GitLab". GitLab. Retrieved 2024-12-27.
  2. ^ IGN (4 May 2021). "L'IGN lance une consultation publique sur les « communs »" (pdf). Retrieved 3 November 2023.
  3. ^ OpenStreetMap France (2021-06-28). "Géo-communs ? Chiche !". OpenStreetMap France (in French). Retrieved 2024-03-17.
  4. ^ "La démarche géocommuns - Institut - IGN". www.ign.fr (in French). 2023-02-27.
  5. ^ "Article Banque des Territoires". Retrieved 8 December 2022.
  6. ^ "Comment les usages de Panoramax se dessinent dans les territoires". www.banquedesterritoires.fr (in French). 2024-03-27. Retrieved 2024-12-09.
  7. ^ a b c Manach, Jean-Marc (2024-01-30). "Panoramax, l'alternative libre et française à Google Street View". Next (in French). Retrieved 2024-03-17.
  8. ^ "Des noms pour le projet". 11 October 2022. Retrieved 3 November 2023.
  9. ^ "Vote pour le nom du projet". 17 October 2022. Retrieved 3 November 2023.
  10. ^ "Panoramax - Base vues immersives libres". beta.gouv.fr.
  11. ^ Marzolf, Emile (2024-01-29). "Pour s'affranchir de Google Street View, l'État joue collectif". Acteurs Publics (in French). Retrieved 2024-03-17.
  12. ^ "Panoramax - Base vues immersives libres". beta.gouv.fr (in French). Retrieved 2024-03-17.
  13. ^ a b c Noisette, Thierry (2024-04-20). "Commun numérique: Panoramax, une base de photos de vues de terrain immersives". ZDNET (in French). Retrieved 2024-12-09.
  14. ^ "Panoramax : alternative libre pour cartographier le territoire". Goodtech (in French). 2024-01-29. Retrieved 2024-12-09.
  15. ^ a b "Panoramax, l'alternative libre et souveraine à Street View". europe1.fr (in French). Retrieved 2024-12-09.
  16. ^ a b "Avec ses vues 3D, Val Parisis agglo ajuste sa carte au territoire (95)". www.banquedesterritoires.fr (in French). 2024-10-10. Retrieved 2024-12-09.
  17. ^ "NLnet; Panoramax". Retrieved 2024-12-30.
  18. ^ "Panoramax : le projet citoyen initié par l'Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN) pour ne plus dépendre de Google Street View" (in French). 2024-09-14. Retrieved 2024-12-30.
  19. ^ "Bayonne participe à Panoramax, sorte de Google Street View pour cartographier en 3D les rues de la ville - France Bleu" (in French). Retrieved 2024-12-30.
  20. ^ "Panoramax, l'alternative libre et souveraine à Street View" (in French). Retrieved 2024-12-30.
  21. ^ Thierry Noisette (2024-04-20). "Commun numérique: Panoramax, une base de photos de vues de terrain immersives" (in French). Retrieved 2024-12-30.
  22. ^ "Panoramax Contributions (@[email protected])". OSM Town | Mapstodon for OpenStreetMap. 2026-04-27. Retrieved 2026-05-25.
  23. ^ "OSM-FR Panoramax server "only for testing if outside of France"". OpenStreetMap Community Forum. 2026-04-29. Retrieved 2026-05-25.
  24. ^ "Anniversaire et appel aux dons pour l'instance Panoramax d'OSM France". Forum OSM France. 2026-05-21. Retrieved 2026-05-25.
  25. ^ "Setting up OSM-HR Panoramax instance". OpenStreetMap. 2026-05-07. Retrieved 2026-05-25.
  26. ^ Tzovaras, Bastian Greshake (2026-05-18). "Setting up a first Panoramax instance for Argentina". Bastian Greshake Tzovaras. Retrieved 2026-05-25.
  27. ^ a b c d e f géolocalisée, Conseil national de l’information (2023-01-23). "Groupe de travail vues immersives et vues de terrain issues d'acquisition terrestre". Conseil national de l’information géolocalisée (in French). Retrieved 2024-03-17.
  28. ^ "Panoramax statistics". Retrieved 24 May 2026.
  29. ^ a b "Panoramax : le projet citoyen initié par l'Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN) pour ne plus dépendre de Google Street View". Franceinfo (in French). 2024-09-14. Retrieved 2024-12-09.
  30. ^ "Bayonne adopte Panoramax, une alternative à Google". presselib.com (in French). 2024-11-27. Retrieved 2024-12-09.
  31. ^ "Panoramax : choix de licence, motion pour AG OSM-FR". 12 June 2023. Retrieved 3 November 2023.
  32. ^ géolocalisée, Conseil national de l’information (2023-01-23). "GT vues immersives et vues de terrain issues d'acquisition terrestre". Conseil national de l’information géolocalisée (in French). Retrieved 2024-12-27.
  33. ^ Noisette, Thierry (2024-04-20). "Commun numérique: Panoramax, une base de photos de vues de terrain immersives". ZDNET (in French). Retrieved 2024-12-27.
  34. ^ "Panoramax · GitLab". GitLab. Retrieved 2024-12-27.
  35. ^ source primaire "API documentation". Retrieved 22 August 2024.
  36. ^ "Panoramax - OpenStreetMap Wiki". wiki.openstreetmap.org. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  37. ^ "23 - Panoramax : retour d'expérience du SDIS34 sur ses prises de vue RTK/360°". peertube.openstreetmap.fr (in French). Retrieved 2024-12-10.
  38. ^ "iD/CHANGELOG.md at release · openstreetmap/iD". GitHub. Archived from the original on 2025-09-01. Retrieved 2025-11-24.

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