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Mourning the End of Paper Maps

theguardian.com

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Re: Mourning the End of Paper Maps

#21

Post by allovernow »

chrisseaton wrote: post #8

There is no way that digital maps are anywhere near as practical, let alone more practical, yet. Digital maps: * rely on precious battery charge and weight * aren't very robust * are extremely hard to use in the dark or with night vision * can't be cut and folded into something small and light enough to hold in a hand * when portable aren't large enough for displaying on a table or wall for people to gather around

You also can't trivially write on them.

And imo it's easier to unfold a full sized map which immediately displays a wide area, to get your bearings, as opposed to having to zoom/pan on a digital map.

Minor inconveniences but arguably a smoother experience. Of course when I sat digital map I'm pretty much referring to Google maps on a phone.

Re: Mourning the End of Paper Maps

#22

Post by nicwolff »

newnewpdro wrote: post #7

Paper charts are still alive and well in sailing

Well, they're alive. The USCG made paper charts optional for US-flagged vessels in 2017. Most cruisers use chartplotters at the helm, and chart apps on phones or tablets for route planning.

At this point, I tend to use my iPhone at the helm as well. The charts are updated more often, and the location and tracking are very accurate (with an external Bluetooth GPS).

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/07/18/2017-15...

https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO%20Documents/5p/5ps/NV...

Re: Mourning the End of Paper Maps

#23

Post by chrisseaton »

jacquesm wrote: post #19
chrisseaton wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I meant image intensifying optics. They're usually not digital unfortunately - they're analog - so you can't easily use them to look at digital image. And how are you going to take a compass bearing off an image being beamed straight into your eyes? And the problem with a digital map with a backlight is it lights you up like a beacon!

Ok, so in that situation something like e-ink might work?

Yeah I guess so... apart from all the other downsides about size and robustness and things.

Re: Mourning the End of Paper Maps

#26

Post by LifeLiverTransp »

My brother new by profession alot of the paper cartographing crowd. They where absolutly blown away by google maps. The concept, that somebody would freely give away satellite images, the gold coins of cartography, was beyond imagination for them.

Sometimes i think, this was the plan behind the piracy support by some companys for some time. Disrupt the media companys and then take over.

Supply what others depend on for free - and wait until the industry collapses, then rule the wastelands.

Re: Mourning the End of Paper Maps

#28

Post by jacquesm »

chrisseaton wrote: post #23
jacquesm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so in that situation something like e-ink might work?

Yeah I guess so... apart from all the other downsides about size and robustness and things.

E-ink is used in the Amazon Kindle's which take quite a bit of abuse and run just about forever on a battery charge. Of course all the usual comparisons between paper and technology still hold.

There was a cartoon on that subject where they re-invented paper as an improvement on the laptop. 'Can be read in full sunlight', 'lasts for 100's of years on a single charge', 'can be burned safely in a pinch' and so on.

Re: Mourning the End of Paper Maps

#29

Post by devicetray0 »

bazzargh wrote: post #3
devicetray0 wrote: post #2

There's a beautiful map store in London that I visited. If I recall, everything in there are contemporary "originals" -- meaning printed in that year, no re-printing. So a 1973 map of the Underground was from 1973. They also had very old, beautiful maps. I wanted them all! After 20 minutes, I began to realize my wife was casually leafing through dozens of poster-size maps with £30,000 price stickers on them. My jaw n…

You can also visit the National Library of Scotland Map Room in Edinburgh - they have a mindboggling 1.5 million sheet maps. https://www.nls.uk/collections/maps While they don't sell originals, they do reproductions on demand for a lot less than 500k. I was just looking at a 1934 sheet for my wall, £27. Tho mainly I go to their site to jump back and forth in time, they have a great georeferenced map browser that lets…

Great news! I'll have to check that out, thanks!

Re: Mourning the End of Paper Maps

#30

Post by growlist »

chrisseaton wrote: post #8

There is no way that digital maps are anywhere near as practical, let alone more practical, yet. Digital maps: * rely on precious battery charge and weight * aren't very robust * are extremely hard to use in the dark or with night vision * can't be cut and folded into something small and light enough to hold in a hand * when portable aren't large enough for displaying on a table or wall for people to gather around

I'd dispute this. I built a vector tile package out of OpenStreetMap a couple of years ago. This gives you offline building level mapping for the entire globe on an SD card, and can be displayed on a smartphone app. Whilst OSM isn't perfect and coverage is variable, one would have to get pretty far off the beaten track for it not to be of at least some practical use. So with this capability all you need is a charged phone and you can travel anywhere in the world knowing you have at least some sort of mapping even without a network connection. I suspect one would need a truck to transport the equivalent in paper maps.
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