I wonder if it would be readable to overlay the distance map with the street map, and connect the two with a line.
Or connect the paths along sidewalks etc that will get you there in the claimed time.
A new kind of map: it’s about time
21–30 of 207 posts
Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
For what it's worth, I think it would be computationally quite hard. You would have to pick a set of points and maybe isomap them from three dimensions (x, y, and time) to two, then find a visually acceptable cage transformation using those points as anchors. You'd have to do this for each query.
Alternative would be to keep the standard geographic map, but have clear points on all possible destinations X minutes away - ideally with a slider, watching the "X minutes" points slide around. Actually pretty easy, given each road segment knowing expected speed, and "X+1" just extending into untraveled areas.
There are many interactive isochrone maps with sliders - one such example is [1]. Other isochrone maps listed here [2] may also have time sliders.
Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time
#23How is this more useful than an ordered list of search results, exactly? Once you've picked your destination, based on travel time, you still want figure out how to get there.
If you were interested in trip chaining, you could still pick the direction you wanted to head.
Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time
#24Interesting concept. I like the overlay idea, but I think simply having that as a standalone map would not be useful in other areas where distance as the crow flies ≠ time traveled. Areas with large bodies of water (like adjacent peninsulas), mountainous areas or areas with strange road infrastructure (Some parts of Virginia). Nonetheless, an interesting concept!
My impression is that the distance is not "as a crow flies". It's distance given the mode of travel you specify.
Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time
#25I wonder how it would look if you directly distorted the map by travel time.
Given the non-Euclidean nature of travel time relationships, I suspect this is physically impossible in the general case.
Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time
#26I would love a distance map that includes public transport travel time. For example, if I live close to metro/subway/train and I want to do really big grocery shopping. It would be interesting to see the nearest grocery that includes those I could reach by jumping on the metro and with minimal total walking. It may be more effective to catch the train to a grocery in a completely different part of town than to walk 3…
Applied to the maps in the article, this could end up introducing animation to the chart. If your local light rail arrives every 30 minutes, then your ETA to arrive at various different grocery stores is gradually changing, drawing nearer to the center, and climbs up a steep (half hour) cliff when you aren't close enough to the station to catch the train.
You could even colour the destinations by level of urgency - blue for destinations where you can casually stroll to the station, or red for ones where you really need to leave right away to catch the train.
Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time
#27How is this more useful than an ordered list of search results, exactly? Once you've picked your destination, based on travel time, you still want figure out how to get there.
More so, it is common to want to go to more than one place in an outing. Most of the time when I am searching for the "nearest" X, I'm really searching for the X that is least out of the way between points A and B. This map doesn't help answer that question while an isochrone, or heatmap, or even standard map does.
Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time
#28How is this more useful than an ordered list of search results, exactly? Once you've picked your destination, based on travel time, you still want figure out how to get there.
Well it still maintains some geographic info by keeping the direction. This helps for instance in identifying clusters of places, so user can think: "If I go that way there a N other places nearby too". Also the cardinal directions are still preserved, which help to interface with user's preexisting geographic knowelege.
Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Isochrones [0] mentioned in the article include basically all the necessary information. I guess a capable GPU-shader programmer could easily render the distortion in real time. (Hint Hint Hacker News for a cool weekend project) [0] https://www.mapbox.com/bites/00156/#10/51.6840/-0.1480
The problem isn't in getting the data for the transformation but to figure out which transformation to use. It's not possible to do in the general case, imagine e.g. an infinitely quick circle line. Where do you put the part of the map that's inside the circle?
Good point.
An infinitely quick circle would reduce to a point. Morphing a 2D map in 3D, I would imagine the inside of the circle like a balloon with the circle as the opening. Reducing that to 2D seems impossible without breaking it somehow.
I guess the problem is worth at least a paper, if not a dissertation. Maybe there is some esoteric math paper in topology which already solved that? Or has proven it impossible?
Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Isochrones [0] mentioned in the article include basically all the necessary information. I guess a capable GPU-shader programmer could easily render the distortion in real time. (Hint Hint Hacker News for a cool weekend project) [0] https://www.mapbox.com/bites/00156/#10/51.6840/-0.1480
The problem isn't in getting the data for the transformation but to figure out which transformation to use. It's not possible to do in the general case, imagine e.g. an infinitely quick circle line. Where do you put the part of the map that's inside the circle?
I think as far as figuring out the transformation to use on the a generic map I would:
0) ignore stuff like "infinitely quick" since that isn't realistic for what we are doing :-)
1) For the map I am displaying, pick a handful of points of interest to hse as controls, as well as my current location.
2) Use existing data we already have for stuff like direction routing to get travel times between all the pairs in our points of interest.
3) Draw a weighted graph, where each vertex is one of our points of interest and each edge is weighted by travel time. The initial position of each point should be it's geographic position, but we can then use an existing graph layout algorithm that uses an energy-based method (e.g. pretend the edges are springs) to deform the graph. This way each point will end up with its distance being proportional to travel time.
4) Using initial points as our input control points, and their location in the graph as output cobtrol points, use any number of image warping algorithms put there to calculate our warp / morph / deformation field.
5) Apply to initial map image.
I don't know how well it would work in practice but seems like a reasonable first stab at it! :-)
EDIT: Apologies for typo, fat fingers on mobile!