81–90 of 96 posts
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I had a hard time finding Ukraine, Thailand was also slightly hard to place pixel-perfect !
Took me a couple tries to get Thailand, too, as it didn't snap to the map the first time I placed it. A version with all countries would be an interesting teaching tool, to learn about geography and cartography. Would need to option to display only some countries at a time, to avoid overwhelming the user.
That was boss, "only" took me a 30-minutes! Well done and great for learning geography.
Seriously 30 minutes? Is this an American thing? To my mind almost all of them were obvious from the shapes alone (the one with straight edges wasn't, but the very fact that its borders are straight lines tell you there's only a few parts of the world it could be in).
Dragging all the red outlines to the equator was a big help.
Initial placement of red outlines in oceans might make the goal more obvious from the initial view.
A "satellite POV" might be interesting (same click&drag UI spins the earth/repositions the POV). The red outlines could then be placed in the empty corners.
Does anyone know why Google insists on Mercator projection? I guess that it makes the implementation bit simpler, but on the other hand you'd imagine that if anyone then Google would have the resources to use some more reasonable projection for greater good.
Google Earth uses a completely different (and superior) system, however it's more resource intensive.
Projections, Mercator included, are ways to map a 3D shape (the globe) onto a static 2D surface (a map). Google Earth uses a dynamic 2D surface (a screen) to display a changing view of a 3D object. See TL;DR.
That was boss, "only" took me a 30-minutes! Well done and great for learning geography.
Seriously 30 minutes? Is this an American thing? To my mind almost all of them were obvious from the shapes alone (the one with straight edges wasn't, but the very fact that its borders are straight lines tell you there's only a few parts of the world it could be in).
And who said the GP was American, anyway?
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Took me a couple tries to get Thailand, too, as it didn't snap to the map the first time I placed it. A version with all countries would be an interesting teaching tool, to learn about geography and cartography. Would need to option to display only some countries at a time, to avoid overwhelming the user.
Stuck on not finding S. Africa
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Not sure if this makes sense, but couldn't they have different projections for different zoom levels?
Yes, e.g. http://cartography.oregonstate.edu/demos/CompositeMapProject...
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I understand that Mercator isn't the most accurate representation, but seriously, "greater good?" There are a lot of things that I think Google can do "for greater good," and changing how they show a map isn't even in the first hundred pages.
The bang for the buck is pretty good though. Most people don't own an Atlas anymore. In the public consciousness Google Maps is the world map. If choice of map projection is important anywhere (which is debatable), it's important on Google Maps. And remember: you can always fail over to Mercator.