Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it • Hacker News Board

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#11

Post by anc84 » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:28 PM UTC

dietrichepp wrote: post #7

This guy "loves world maps" but chose Mercator for the wall of his room? I guess there's no accounting for taste. There are hundreds of projections to choose from, why choose the one optimized for navigation by compass ?

I was hoping to see what he learned was projections.

Still better than no map on the wall. The style looks lovely at this scale! I would have made my own map from NE and OSM data but not everyone knows how much great data is available for free and how easy making maps with it is. We who know should do a better job of sharing.

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#12

Post by 3327 » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:28 PM UTC

I tried 5% of what you did and failed... Basically I would pay for one... I guess this one is saved on the project list backburner.

www.kayatilev.com most of my work is furniture. Finishing up a coffee table would love feedback.

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#13

Post by pharke » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:29 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #4

> I've spent 1,5 years working on this project So wouldn't it make more sense to just buy a huge display then? :)

Or a decent high res LED projector, would have cost less than the foam board he stuck the map to and he could have it done in a day.

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#14

Post by bedatadriven » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:30 PM UTC

FWIW, a shameless plug for the company where I had my first programming job as a 17 year old: www.marketmaps.com. They will print and ship HUGE maps without a moment's hesitation. Choose a nice world map with a decent projection or send them a PDF and they'll overnight to you :-)

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#15

Post by Doctor_Fegg » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:30 PM UTC

"OpenStreetMap... the additional work to custom style the maps would be extraordinary"

It absolutely wouldn't. Download TileMill or its successor, Mapbox Studio. Adjust the (Carto)CSS. Done.

Though for a map of this scale I'd probably work straight from Natural Earth[1] without involving OSM, to be honest.

Looks great, anyway.

[1] http://www.naturalearthdata.com/

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#16

Post by cmrx64 » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:31 PM UTC

anc84 wrote: post #11

dietrichepp wrote: post #7

This guy "loves world maps" but chose Mercator for the wall of his room? I guess there's no accounting for taste. There are hundreds of projections to choose from, why choose the one optimized for navigation by compass ?

I was hoping to see what he learned was projections. Still better than no map on the wall. The style looks lovely at this scale! I would have made my own map from NE and OSM data but not everyone knows how much great data is available for free and how easy making maps with it is. We who know should do a better job of sharing.

Me too. Sorely disappointed, but he does mention the issue in the footnotes. Glad he's happy with it though! It's a neat project.

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#17

Post by Demiurge » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:33 PM UTC

I wish someone would have recommended him to tweak one of many available OSM styles in TileMill. He also could have exported the layer in any tile shape, projection, and resolution using mapnik. You can even render to vector trivially, which comes in very handy for any printable pdfs.

https://github.com/mapbox/osm-bright

https://github.com/mapnik/mapnik/wiki/MapnikRenderers

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#18

Post by bluedino » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:34 PM UTC

It would kill me to stick pins in something that nice looking.

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#19

Post by castell » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:34 PM UTC

xt wrote: post #5

Very cool. But I was surprised to see he chose Mercator. See: https://xkcd.com/977/

I thought that too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection

Which map projections would you choose? A difficult decision: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections

Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it

#20

Post by anc84 » Thu, Apr 30, 2015, 12:37 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #4

> I've spent 1,5 years working on this project So wouldn't it make more sense to just buy a huge display then? :)

Nah, a display at that size with comparable resolution will cost a fortune (if it actually is available for mortals). Also power consumption would be quite a sum.