3 ms·

Equal Earth map projection

• xvedejas 8y ago
  > But for contemporary use, say in a classroom, minimizing area distortion is often a higher priority than keeping bearing lines straight. You'll find that in contemporary use, especially when computer interfaces are involved, a very nice property to have is called conformity. A conformal map projection satisfies the property that, as one zooms in to smaller regions, what one sees better and better approximates the actual shapes on the spheroid. This is actually the reason that mercator is so prevalent today, not the "rhumb line" property useful for navigation, which was probably more a factor centuries ago. This proposed projection is not conformal, so if you were to zoom into any area away from the prime meridian, street grids would not meet at 90 deg, rectangular buildings would look like rhombuses, and other distortions would be noticeable. This isn't acceptable for tools like google maps/bing maps/etc, where one spends much time zoomed in.