I wonder what the long term geopolitical consequences will be when we all stop looking at projected maps. That small peninsula to the west of Asia just got a little smaller. A certain island kingdom is now more clearly the size of Uganda. Maybe Google can also flip the globe "upside-down" for all users "below" the equator.
Google Maps is no longer a flat map
31–40 of 173 posts
Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map
#32Greenland is the size of Congo, around 2,2 million km2 while entire Africa is around 30 million km2. Europe being around 10 and North America 24 million km2.
Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map
#33"On flat maps, it’s impossible to represent land mass size on a relative scale." Um, no it's not. TechCrunch needs better editors. You just need to use a non-Mercator projection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection
Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map
#34-- sermons of J Donne (as quoted by oppenheimer)
Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map
#35"On flat maps, it’s impossible to represent land mass size on a relative scale." Um, no it's not. TechCrunch needs better editors. You just need to use a non-Mercator projection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection
That's still not an accurate map. 3D maps don't have projection issues, they can have near perfect representation of the world.
In general an orthographic projection is a poor choice. The thing going for it is that it is easy to understand by analogy to a physical globe, and human spatial understanding can partially compensate for the distortion by imagining a sphere.
But there are also disadvantages, for example on an orthographic projection north is not always vertical, latitude and longitude lines are neither perpendicular nor straight, shapes and areas can be very dramatically distorted near the edge of the map, there are dramatic distance errors between far away points or points not in the center of view, it is impossible to view more than half of the planet’s surface in one view, etc.
There are many other choices of map projections, and for any particular purpose, some other projection is usually better.
Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map
#36Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map
#37I wonder what the long term geopolitical consequences will be when we all stop looking at projected maps. That small peninsula to the west of Asia just got a little smaller. A certain island kingdom is now more clearly the size of Uganda. Maybe Google can also flip the globe "upside-down" for all users "below" the equator.
Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map
#38"On flat maps, it’s impossible to represent land mass size on a relative scale." Um, no it's not. TechCrunch needs better editors. You just need to use a non-Mercator projection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection
The Gall–Peters projection is a rectangular map projection that maps all areas such that they have the correct sizes relative to each other. Like any equal-area projection, it achieves this goal by distorting most shapes.
Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map
#39Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map
#40You just have to unzoom far away from earth and it'll show you a menu where you can choose where you want to go.
https://www.google.com/maps/space/mercury/@47.5337211,-157.4...