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Google Maps is no longer a flat map

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Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map

#51

Post by rspeer »

sigmar wrote: post #7

>On flat maps, it’s impossible to represent land mass size on a relative scale. This isn't right. It is impossible to represent both relative position and relative size accurately. Gall-Peters and other equal-area projections accurately represent relative sizes.

There are cartographically reasonable equal-area or nearly-equal-area projections. Why are we still talking about Gall-Peters?

Peters was a charlatan who knew very little geography (he didn't even want to give credit to the geographer who discovered his map), and the Gall-Peters projection is Mercator for old-school hippies who think they can promote equality by making Africa taller.

Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map

#52

Post by jcrawfordor »

jensvdh wrote: post #47
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! I'm actually quite annoyed that Google took away the visible option to disabled the 3D aerial view. It's such a resource hog, and my work's internet is often quite slow, and 3D has far more data to retrieve.

People like you are the reason we need to support IE6

I think it's worth replying to this to reinforce the point that the new mode has technical disadvantages compared to the old mode. Some of my projects involve a great deal of time spent looking at aerial imagery, sometimes for hours a day, and while Google Maps is not the panacea of aerial images it is one of the best single sources in terms of usability and quality of images.

That said, prior to knowing this trick I was stuck with the effectively unmaintained Google Earth instead of the web view primarily because of the web maps insistence on the 3D rendering mode. The attempt to conform buildings and, most annoyingly, trees to the elevation data makes the imagery almost useless at close zoom levels, as all the actual detail disappears into clutter artificially introduced by the edges on the elevation data. It significantly reduces the amount of spatial resolution you can get out of areas where they have very good images.

Earth still has tools that web view doesn't have, but often I'm not even that interested in measurements and just want to be able to carefully inspect the image. This doesn't seem to be something Google wants to support any more!

Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map

#53

Post by mjg59 »

barryp wrote: post #29

Very cool. However it's not using great circle routes for airline directions, for example ask to go from Calgary to London. It should go well over Greenland, but instead just follows the same path you'd get from drawing a line on a Mercator map.

Eastbound flights often take non-great circle routes in order to make better use of the jetstream - depending on the forecast, a straight eastward line may be more accurate than a great circle.

Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map

#54

Post by rococode »

martijn_himself wrote: post #46

Google Maps must be one of the modern wonders of the world, it's still nothing short of breathtaking to zoom out of streetview in crowded London and then land somewhere on a country crossroads in remote Vietnam.

And once you land on those country crossroads, you can continue exploring the area at the street level. It's really an incredible tool for sating wanderlust - just pop over to some place you've wanted to visit and wander the streets via streetview, all from the comfort of your seat!

Speaking of which, GeoGuessr [1] is a great example of how to enjoy Google Maps. You start at some random streetview and try to figure out where in the world you are by walking around (and hoping to see a sign or two)! A lot of times you end up in dirt roads in small countries, and it's really cool to see what it looks like there.

[1] https://geoguessr.com/

Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map

#55

Post by MattBlissett »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #14
SiempreViernes wrote: post #10

Finally we are rid of the biggest source of Mercator! Finally we can look at the south pole!

Actually no, McMurdo remains a white sport still :(

This is an unfinished demo from a while back, but I made vector and raster map tiles in a WGS84 projection, so McMurdo is included — though you have to find it yourself [1]

I'm unlikely to work on the globe, it's cool[2] but we don't really need it. Maybe when OpenLayers Cesium[3] gets support for vector tiles, so we don't have to see fuzzy, distorted raster tiles.

[1] https://tile.gbif.org/ui/Globe/temp-debug.html (click "Toggle" in the top right)

[2] https://tile.gbif.org/ui/Globe/

[3] https://openlayers.org/ol-cesium/

Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map

#58

Post by CommieBobDole »

pseudonym2 wrote: post #41

So it's no longer a map application, because it's producing weird non-standard projections, tiles that can't be stitched/georeferenced properly etc. Will Google support and maintain an actual maps application? Or will they merge google earth and google maps together in an even less capable tool purely for consumers to wow at? Castrating Google Earth with the webgl version and locking it into Chrome was bad enough. I…

Google Earth desktop edition is still available. And it's still approximately ten thousand times better than the browser edition.

https://www.google.com/earth/download/gep/agree.html

Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map

#59

Post by mixmastamyk »

martijn_himself wrote: post #46

Google Maps must be one of the modern wonders of the world, it's still nothing short of breathtaking to zoom out of streetview in crowded London and then land somewhere on a country crossroads in remote Vietnam.

I tried something similar to Google Earth in the late 90's at SIGGRAPH, running on an SGI Origin or similar. Was gobsmacked as I "parachuted" from orbit into Dodger Stadium. :D

Re: Google Maps is no longer a flat map

#60

Post by kupiakos »

jensvdh wrote: post #47
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! I'm actually quite annoyed that Google took away the visible option to disabled the 3D aerial view. It's such a resource hog, and my work's internet is often quite slow, and 3D has far more data to retrieve.

People like you are the reason we need to support IE6

People wanting an option for efficient systems is not the same as using an archaic browser.
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