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The point is just that this is a map which faithfully represents relative areas? We've known how to do that for hundreds of years; see https://en.wikipedia.org/
by Chinjut 10y ago
The point is just that this is a map which faithfully represents relative areas? We've known how to do that for hundreds of years; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Equal-area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Equal-area.
It's of note that there are some ways in which a flat map can never accurately represent a spherical geometry; for example, not even any small patch of a globe can be represented on a flat map with all distances kept faithful.
ETA: I shouldn't be so quickly dismissive, perhaps; it's also noted that this "AuthaGraph" map has certain tiling properties I'll have to think about further.
- kuschku 10y agoIt tiles, so it can be used for web maps, you can just rotate it slightly and always have it north-pointing, so it can be used for mobile maps, and it shows the world in an equal view. And it doesn’t distort the shape of continents either, only the composition. This is amazing.
- pavlov 10y agoThanks for explaining the map's benefits much better than the original article!
- ant6n 10y agoWhat do you mean the continents are not distorted. South America looks pretty distorted to me, so does Australia.
- kuschku 10y agoA lot less than on Mercator, which is the only other projection with the same properties.
- ant6n 10y agoMercator is not area-preserving. It's angle preserving. It's perfect for things like Google Maps, because no matter where you zoom in, a small geographical area will not be distorted. It will merely be represented at a different scale. When zoomed in, there are no distortions using Mercator.
- kuschku 10y agoCorrect. Which this one does well enough, too, at the scales required for web maps. Which makes this very awesome.
- anc84 10y agoCan't you tile any projection? At least can't you nicely tile all those that have a rectangular boundary? Rotating north-wise for close-up views would work of course, but close-up you could just use a "proper" UTM projection instead. For the global view this map feels gimmicky/artsy and not useful for everyday usage. Disclaimer: I like this work very much and I am super happy a map won this award! I just feel that it has very little use outside of design or art.
- kuschku 10y agoTrue, but you want a seemless zoom from the world view onto a local image, without having too much distortion in populated zones. The simplest solution is to just do what Google earth did: use a globe.