A rather geeky/technical weblog, est. 2001, by Bramus
In the 16th century, Gerardus Mercator, a Flemish cartographer devised a new way of depicting the world on a flat plane. We set off to explore his map in order to illustrate his biggest blunders, unearth curious facts and explain the advantages that make this representation of the globe still relevant today. I especially like …
One of the core ideas covered in my talk named “Geoshizzle” on mapping is that the Mercator projection is way overdue. It’s main feature of preserving angle measurements is no longer feasible in this time and age (it was back when you were sailing a boat to get somewhere), and it’s distortion of areas has …
Continue reading “The problem with maps // Playing with Projections”
If you’ve been following my blog for some time now you’ll know that I’m no fan of the Mercator projection, as it has distorted our perception of how big countries are. With “The True Size Of…” you can drag around some countries and see so yourself. If this rings a bell: yes indeed, it’s comparable …
UPDATE 2018.03.07: The issue requesting to have this in the core of Google Maps got marked as fixed … unfortunately I cannot find this change back in the documentation, so I’m not too sure if it’s actually fixed or not. Will keep tracking it. Since Google Maps v3.11 (*) it’s possible to move around a …