It seems like there is little tactical payoff in doing this, as large, foreign militaries would already have detailed, accurate maps covering the whole world, China included. I bet this is an internal-resistance oriented policy.
All Maps in China are Transformed
31–40 of 119 posts
Re: All Maps in China are Transformed
#32How is this news? I work in the digital mapping world and there everybody knows this. You cannot even get the data out of China, all data has to stay within China and if you want to do map business in China, you can only do it through a joint-venture with a Chinese company. [edit] BTW: India is similar, they are not scrambling the map, but it cannot leave the country either. So as a map-maker you have to have a local…
It's news to the rest of us who don't work in that world.
Requiring legitimate incorporation in a foreign country in order to do business there (typically through partnership with a domestic firm) is also not unique to China or map making.
Re: All Maps in China are Transformed
#33How maps look like depend on a whole bunch of other factors like the projection they use etc. Thus simply overlaying the maps and say, hey, this is distorted, is simply unfounded. It's very likely that Google maps etc may be adopting different projection systems so the users can have smooth using experience zooming in and out, and panning across the global without feeling the earth is round.
Re: All Maps in China are Transformed
#34It could simply be a map projection issue - where the traffic data projection is slightly off by an order of 1000 meters. This datum shift could be easily fixed by Google.
Re: All Maps in China are Transformed
#35This is not a problem with using a GPS, the problem is the shift from using different mapping technologies. Trying to get satellite and the map portions to line up is very difficult. Trying to do it on a global scale with data from multiple sources... you get the idea. Now please get back to China bashing and don't let the facts get in the way of your political/religious feelings. Remember to include lots anecdotal e…
While I understand your cynicism, my experience in Shanghai and Beijing suggests that Google Maps are some way off between satellite and streetmap modes. I have not found the same problem (or at least to anywhere near the same level) in the UK, Chicago, Michigan, Korea, Japan, Germany, Slovakia and many other countries. There does seem to be an offset applied. An example in Shanghai: http://g.co/maps/m34n8 An example…
No where else has more sky scrapers than Shanghai and Beijing, which easily affects your GPS signal.
Re: All Maps in China are Transformed
#36It could simply be a map projection issue - where the traffic data projection is slightly off by an order of 1000 meters. This datum shift could be easily fixed by Google.
A map projection issue would show up in other places on the map, and would have been fixed by now.
Re: All Maps in China are Transformed
#37How maps look like depend on a whole bunch of other factors like the projection they use etc. Thus simply overlaying the maps and say, hey, this is distorted, is simply unfounded. It's very likely that Google maps etc may be adopting different projection systems so the users can have smooth using experience zooming in and out, and panning across the global without feeling the earth is round. http://en.wikipedia.org/w…
A map projection issue could a) easily be fixed, and b) would have been noticed and fixed already, as it would manifest in more places than just china.
Re: All Maps in China are Transformed
#38Could it be true also for the some parts of Europe ? When i was in Belgium ( Brugge ) and Germany ( Nürnberg, Berlin ) i used google maps a lot. And i realised some streets, not all, looks longer or shorter than others on the map.
Generally buying national map data is expensive in europe.
The naming of streets is also quite complex, if the street has been there for 1000years then it's likely that various of layers of government aren't quite in synch with what they are calling it.
so if google maps just uses a free public domain source it might not match what the city council or the post office use
Re: All Maps in China are Transformed
#39Back in the early 90's (in the US) I had a friend who was a college student from China. In the common area of her dorm there was a huge wall-size Rand-McNally map of the world. We were looking it over. "There's China" I said. "And there's Taiwan." "You know Taiwan is really not that big." she said. "What do you mean?" "Map makers show it larger than it really is in order to exaggerate its importance." I was a little…
Are you suggesting that in this case the blogger is similarly misinformed or deluded?
I don't think it's unreasonable to think that China is manipulating its map data, particularly when other people here in the mapping industry have already said this is well known in their field.
Re: All Maps in China are Transformed
#40This reminds me of the Peters Projection, one of the weirder attempts to map the oblate spheroid nature of the earth to a 2D plane.