A Year of Google and Apple Maps

Re:A Year of Google and Apple Maps by puzzle on Saturday May 27, 2017 @05:38PM (#14432086)

It's not expensive, but it all adds up. I put the words in quotes because it's not actually what is commonly known as a drop shadow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_shadow). It's more like a silhouette shader. This picture shows the effect in full glory:

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C3L7c1Y1ck4/UZOk1ldMiBI/AAAAAAAAC...

I can't remember if the highlighted water region was in a fixed location or if it followed the sunlight. (You definitely see building shadows change direction according to the time of the day in 2D WebGL mode, e.g. near the Eiffel tower. This is what I mean when I say that it all adds up, especially with WebGL 1.0 and an underpowered GPU like the original Chromebook Pixel's Intel HD4000.)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A Year of Google and Apple Maps by Theodores on Sunday May 28, 2017 @02:06AM (#14433297)

Do people actually use the Chromebook Pixel Mark 1 in the Googleplex and is 3D performance on maps a problem for them?

A while ago I took off the 'designer' font choices from a website (spider grey text on grey background, kerning mangled) with some local CSS. Everyone prefered the simple legibility to what was on my screen so we set the website to be like mine, legible.

I wonder if some people on the Google Maps team had a similar internal hack to optimise their workflow - turning off graphics cruft - get back to legibility - and if someone got this fed back into the actual design, 'as proven by the team'. I prefer this evolution of design, from people who have to get the data right in the first case and how they 'optimise' the presentation of that information for themselves.

[ Parent | on HN ]