Why do people feel like they can just edit Antarctica out?
Why not? It's a pretty much uninhabited, massive chunk of land. It's practically the definition of wasted space in a project like this.
Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it
131–140 of 234 posts
Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it
#132"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/
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Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't believe I'm doing this, but I think I'm going to defend Mercator here. The Mercator projection was indeed originally designed for compass navigation, but the reason it's still used for web mapping is slightly different. The Mercator projection is conformal . What this means is that angles (and hence in some sense shapes) are preserved locally. When we zoom in on a small section of the Mercator projection, we…
If I understand correctly, Mercator is the only conformal projection where north is always up, no matter where you zoom in. That makes it nice for online maps. If you relax the "north is up" requirement, there's tons of conformal projections that look nice: http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjConf/projC... I really like the "classic Guyou" projection: http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/Normal/ProjCo…
According to your linked image, one advantage of classic Guyou projection to the writer of the article is that it seems to contain a straight, uninterrupted vertical path through only ocean. He stated that he wanted maximize ocean in his panel cut, but I think he still had to cut through a bit of Africa.
Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it
#134"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/
This is an amazing thread and comment. I've been looking to do a similar thing to the OP, and his much more thorough research confirms what I had found - none of the map sellers provide quite what I want, and I would have to resort to building it myself out of google maps (ideally using the API, not the web client).
Mapbox looks like exactly the thing I'm looking for (I want a local street-level map), thanks!
Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it
#135This article's throwaway notion of glow-in-the-dark pins has got me thinking about how to make a surface with light-up LED pins that can be stuck in arbitrarily. - You could use (cleverly-braided+insulated) regular LEDs if there was a breadboard or something behind the map, but that'd be both huge and inconvenient. - Maybe LEDs with inductive coils and a large backing induction mat? - Given a metallic backing, and a…
Around 2003 at MIT I spoke with a guy who told me about a home lighting system that the French were using. Basically, you take an entire wall in a house and sandwich thin conductive layers between insulator layers. Then you have these special light fixtures with a sharp pronged tip that exposes three different wire heads at different lengths.
You just stab one of these fixtures into the wall anywhere you want; each of the three prongs travels to a different depth and makes contact with a layer representing the hot, neutral, and ground lines so that your light fixture is now plugged into 220 Volt wall socket current.
At the time, I remember saying "that sounds totally insane". I still think it is. But if you made a special map backing board rather than entire walls and ran a lot less power through it....
Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it
#136This article's throwaway notion of glow-in-the-dark pins has got me thinking about how to make a surface with light-up LED pins that can be stuck in arbitrarily. - You could use (cleverly-braided+insulated) regular LEDs if there was a breadboard or something behind the map, but that'd be both huge and inconvenient. - Maybe LEDs with inductive coils and a large backing induction mat? - Given a metallic backing, and a…
> You could use (cleverly-braided+insulated) regular LEDs if there was a breadboard or something behind the map, but that'd be both huge and inconvenient.
Theres a simpler solution that uses the same idea. Have pins that look like mono audio jacks, so the "tip" and "ring" are separate. Put two layers of conductive material down on the map, one on each side of the insulating board, and apply a voltage between them. When you stick in the pin, your "ring" contacts the closest layer, the tip the furthest, and so you have a voltage available to power the LED in the head. The voltage would only need to be about 3V or so, so its perfectly safe, you just need a small fuse in case of shorts.
Manufacturing a conductive "ring" on a pin would be difficult with machining, so using a conductive paint on top of an insulating paint would be the best option. The hardest issue would be ensuring a reliable contact with the ring, as the contact surface would be very small.
Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The Mercator projection was indeed originally designed for compass navigation, but the reason it's still used for web mapping is slightly different. The Mercator projection is conformal. Just speculating here, but it's also a big rectangle that is easy on the eyes. Non-rectangular online maps would fit awkwardly in websites. As for Gall-Peters, that map is just irredeemably ugly to me, and I'm ignorant of other rect…
Yes, absolutely! The Mercator projection isn't the only conformal projection, but it is the only one for which north-south maps to the vertical axis, and east-west to the horizontal axis. That means that it maps the whole world onto a rectangle, which works well both for computers and interior decorating. As for other rectangular projections, the most common is the equirectangular (or plate carrée), which simply maps…
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Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
A Mercator projection (ed: is a Conformal map, but) it also greatly distorts both angles and shapes as you approach the poles. The trivial example is to walk a square mile (N,W,S,E) you would expect the opposite sides to be at 45deg angle, but on Mercator the sides get stretched so a square in the real world can have a 10+:1 or even 100:1 side lengths on a Mercator map. The property they both preserve is points north…
It preserves angles locally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformal_map
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Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it
#139I was formerly a cartographer with the military; I have lots of experience with large format maps, both of the world and of single countries (usually Iraq). It was fun to read an article about a map that wasn't hastily tacked up on a wall with nails or duct tape. A few notes: - Paper sags over time. Good thing he mounted it to a board - We printed on tyvek for water/rip proofing, which was interesting. It's surprisin…
"This reminded me of Colonels coming to me in the military saying - "I want all of Iraq on my wall at 1:50,000" and as a junior enlisted man saying something, very respectfully, like "Well, sir, Iraq is about 900km from top to bottom, so that's 900,000m, and at 1:50,000 that's about 18m from top to bottom. How high are your ceilings?"
Ahaha... I am really curious though. What were their responses? Just do it? Or was it like, my wall is 5 meters high, so make maps that will fit that height?
What's your take on digital maps in military? I gather printed maps will be around a looong time because tablets just cannot match the usefulness of maps (at least at platoon/company level)?
Always amazed to hear from people of such diverse background and experience here and on the internet in general.
Re: Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get the impression he's not just talking about coloring, but also about what labels to show, how to space and lay them out, etc. He mentions this explicitly: > [...] the real challenge for a map service is to decide what they should and should not display. Google does an excellent job [...]
You can edit all of that with CartoCSS. OP made a great map, but Mapbox Studio really is ideal for a project like this. https://www.mapbox.com/guides/cartocss-in-studio/#studio
It doesn't follow that because CartoCSS/Mapbox studios is "editable", "customizable", and "easy", that the specific combinations of configuration and adjustment available would meet his complex criterion of minimizing time, effort, money, and aesthetics. I'd imagine Google Maps is optimized to a T for all of the tiny specific label placements you want, and I'm not convinced from the one-off choice it would have been a 100% better idea for the OP to use.
It might have been a better choice, and maybe he didn't evaluate the option, but I still imagine the complexity of these options for the OP's specific aesthetic taste is quite large.