Real-world map data is helping make better games about farms and transportation

I'm feeling a strange sense of pressure as I set up my first bus route in City Bus Manager. I want to get things right for the public transportation users of this city, probably because it's the city I actually live in. City Bus Manager uses OpenStreetMap (OSM) data to populate its maps, so I can see all the familiar streets and points of interest laid out in front of me. These are my neighbors, who, like me, want an efficient transit service. I want to be able to provide it to them - even if only in a simulation.

City Bus Manager is part of a small group of management sims that are using OSM's community-generated database to make the whole world their game setting. Other examples include Global Farmer, NIMBY Rails, and Logistical: Earth. In these games, players can build farms, railways, or delivery networks all over the globe, using data about real fields, settlements, and infrastructure to inform their decisions.

When the idea of using OSM was first raised at PeDePe, the studio behind City Bus Manager, "we had no idea if it would be technically feasible," says Niklas Polster, the studio's co-founder. But once established, the license gave them access to an entire world of str …

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