The Map You Grew Up with Is a Lie. This Is What the World Looks Like

Re:The Map You Grew Up with Is a Lie. This Is What the World... by xvedejas on Friday February 05, 2021 @06:59PM (#26042739)

The Mercator projection is the only 2D map projection where:

  - North is always up
  - Angles are correct

If that's your criteria for correctness, then Mercator is the most correct map projection. If you want a map that shows correct right-angle grids in cities when zoomed in, for instance, you don't care about country d̶i̶c̶k̶-̶m̶e̶a̶s̶u̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ area-measuring contests.

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Re:The Map You Grew Up with Is a Lie. This Is What the World... by tzs on Saturday February 06, 2021 @12:11AM (#26044301)

Nowadays most people deal with maps on computers. It should be possible to have a map that stores the underlying map data in 3D and projects it on the fly to your 2D display, using different projections at different scales. Maybe use an area preserving projection when zoomed way out, an angle preserving one when zoomed way in, and some kind of mix in between.

Or maybe even let the user specify what they want preserved and use an appropriate projection.

Are there any computer maps that do this?

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Re:The Map You Grew Up with Is a Lie. This Is What the World... by bagacrap on Saturday February 06, 2021 @09:27AM (#26046688)

google earth?

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Re:The Map You Grew Up with Is a Lie. This Is What the World... by candiodari on Saturday February 06, 2021 @11:44AM (#26047681)

Google earth simply shows the 3d structure at every zoom level. No projection, and when zoomed out, even on the web, it shows a ball.

Probably not too useful for Navigation of course.

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Re:The Map You Grew Up with Is a Lie. This Is What the World... by spacemanmatt on Friday February 05, 2021 @09:47PM (#26043666)

I feel like preserving angles is way more important to this math/eng crowd than it is to casual map users.

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Re:The Map You Grew Up with Is a Lie. This Is What the World... by gus_massa on Friday February 05, 2021 @11:24PM (#26044115)

Preserving angles is good for sailors. A long time ago, (almost) only sailors needed a map of the whole word, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection#Marine_Nav...

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Re:The Map You Grew Up with Is a Lie. This Is What the World... by lupire on Friday February 05, 2021 @09:00PM (#26043457)

Delete the crudeness; don't just cross it out.

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Re:The Map You Grew Up with Is a Lie. This Is What the World... by xvedejas on Friday February 05, 2021 @10:08PM (#26043758)

I hope it's clear I'm mocking the crudeness of conflating area and worth? Take up your issues with the article author.

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