With a human face
I did not realize the distance between the US and Canada was so big.
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
252 points (98.1% liked)
Map Enthusiasts
3436 readers
52 users here now
For the map enthused!
Rules:
-
post relevant content: interesting, informative, and/or pretty maps
-
be nice
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
It sucks that mercator became the standard map. I know basically nothing about maps, but i know how not-great mercator is. Of the little i know about cartography I like Winkel Tripel the best
Dln't quote me on this, but from what I've heard, the Mercador projection became standard because it's good for navigating since qit conserves angles. Draw a strait line depicting your current trajectory and another the trajectory that would get you where you want, measure the angle between them, and that's the actual angle you need to turn.
Yeah, it’s actually a really great map for its purpose of navigation, which is a pretty damn important aspect of map usage. I’m tired of everyone shitting on it because of that scene in west wing.
It’s great for navigating at sea, but bad for looking at the world as a whole. Nowadays most people use maps for the latter; hence the complaints.
Sure, that’s why I qualified with “for its intended purpose”. It’s not a great classroom map but it is perhaps the most historically important projection. The problem is this idea of “Mercator bad” has entered public consciousness. For example, the start of this thread mentioned “how not-great the mercator is” without any such qualifications.
Maybe one day I’ll get a Cahill-Keyes projection on the wall. I think it’s useful to see how surface areas compare.
because of that scene in west wing.
Which scene is that?
https://youtu.be/vVX-PrBRtTY?si=EJI98A0zZR6zkURc Im sure there were people who felt this way before this episode, but it really exploded in public consciousness afterward.
Internet people pretending to have never seen a globe at school so they can be outraged by Big Greenland.
In the Internet age, I believe Mercator remains standard because it's easy, since image buffers and UI viewports are implemented as rectangular arrays. For example, when you click on the map the pixel coordinates can be converted to (lat, long) just by scaling, without having to do complicated coordinate transformations.
What you see in stuff like Google Maps or OpenStreetMap isn't plain Mercator, it's a variant called "Web Mercator"
And the US DoD doesn't like it because it introduces even more deviations than plain Mercator.
It's all about your intended use. If you want to use Google maps to get to work, the DoD has no problem with web Mercator on the maps backend that serves up your map tiles.
If you're firing up Arcmap for a GIS project, using the map to navigate based on earth features, or making a reference map, of course the DoD or anyone else, wouldn't want you to use web mercator
And no projection is perfect they all introduce weird things, like this equirectangular map
which is not conformal or equal area.
Winkel Tripel is very nice!
Ah, I see you're that kind of map enthusiast, eh?
Edit: I see you've already posted it yourself. Not an original bone in my body.
Mercator stans will try and convince you that Russia and Canada aren't actually islands with thousands of miles of ocean isolating them from all their neighbours smh my head 😤
I kinda like the Kavrayskiy VII projection. It's similar to the Winkel triple but it looks more natural to me, like a 2D Google Earth.
Eckert IV is mine, which is quite similar visually. It has the upside of being equal-area, but the downside of squashing the poles a bit more. Sadly both of us suffer the injustice of being excluded from that one xkcd comic
It looks cool!
Unmuted this and was very disappointed that there wasn't a trombone sound
“It’s freaking me out!”
I think that was the upside down map
Which is why should use the Gall-Peters projection.
I hate you.
USA is only about as big as europe in surface area? And russia about 1/3 bigger?
Since when is Patagonia its own country?
Islands have been done separately from the mainland when they're part of the same country on this map. Look at Canada, where Vancouver Island and Newfoundland end up far away from the rest of Canada
Ah good call
Breathe in!
Another L for Russia