@ian Depends on the "why". For a screensaver, its value is in showing the diversity of mapping, imo. Hense the density is a downside.

For a monitoring tool, I'd first go in the way of filtering changes. Both conventional (e.g. area) and not (e.g. imports, weird buildings and roads, updates to old objects). Since it uses changes, not changesets, it could have some interesting options.