Panoramax

Key takeaways

Panoramax belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Panoramax to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Panoramax from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

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. 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" proposing the creation of an open database for street-level images. 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. Panoramax was launched in October 2022. The name "Panoramax" was decided upon after a proposal phase and vote by 48 community members. 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. 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. 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. In the same year, the project also gained more media attention, especially in public and private French-speaking media, including Franceinfo, France Bleu, Europe 1 and ZDNet. In April 2026, the federation of Panoramax instances reached a total of over 100 million uploaded images. 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, and started a crowdfunding campaign for the third birthday of the instance's existence. At the same time, further Panoramax instances started, bringing the total number of public instances to 12, including by the Croatian OSM group and an instance in Argentina. The project's budget is €500,000, and 6 people work on the project.

Images

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.

Open licensing Images hosted and published using the software are openly licensed and allow the free re-use of the images, unlike proprietary projects such as Google Street View, which are controlled by Google and thus largely prevent the re-use of images. 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). The French IGN instance publishes images using the etalab-2.0 license ("Licence Ouverte").

Contributing to Panoramax

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. 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.

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.

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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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.

References

External links Panoramax website Panoramax instance of OpenStreetMap France Panoramax instance of the IGN

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Panoramax

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Panoramax claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Panoramax before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Panoramax ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Panoramax

In research: Panoramax appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Panoramax in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Panoramax is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Cartography, OpenStreetMap, Organizations established in 2022, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Panoramax outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Panoramax in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Panoramax means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Panoramax out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Panoramax in simple terms?

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.

Why does Panoramax matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Panoramax?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Panoramax.