5 ms·

I'm the author of the article — happy to see this upvoted, feel free to ask any questions about web maps!

s1mon 5y ago
It's great to see this improvement, and read about the development. The one issue that stuck out is that there is not enough (any?) "ease-in/ease-out" to the animation as it transitions from zooming to zooming and rotating. Ideally this would be much more continuous. The Anchorage example is jarring as it switches from one type of zoom to the other. As an observer, I should not be able to say "here's the moment where it changes".
fenfe1 5y ago
I guess this is more a feature request than a question - but do you have plans to support stenographic projections as well? I ask as I work for an Arctic/Antarctic research institute so most projections are unsuitable.
- mourner 5y ago
  Definitely something we want to explore more, although it's quite a challenge since most map data distribution systems including ours are built around Mercator tiles, which can't show anything beyond ~85 latitude degrees.
- derekja 5y ago
  I'd love to touch base on how you are handling this now.. I'm using a combination of geoserver, react, and openlayers for a Canadian Arctic 3573 projection. I'm derekja various places including Gmail. Thanks!
nixpulvis 5y ago
Are there live demos that could be embedded instead of (or in addition to) the animated gifs?
- mourner 5y ago
  Here's a live demo from our examples: https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/example/projections/ https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/example/projections/ We decided to go with live videos to demonstrate the concepts in motion, and because embedding WebGL vector maps on an already big page might slow it down quite a bit, but definitely something to consider more in the future.
  - nixpulvis 5y ago
    Maybe just put a little click to start over it, thus indicating it's resource intensive. Not to give users flashbacks or anything, but as long as it isn't too big and/or was already downloaded, people should be happy.
scoopertrooper 5y ago
This is really cool! One issue I noticed though is that if you use gestures to zoom on a touch pad, then you'll end up in the wrong spot. For instance, I put my cursor on Sydney with a Lambert projection and pinch to zoom. As I pinch in, my cursor moves away from Sydney as the map rotates, so the centre of the map ends up at some other place. Ideally, it should cache the geographic coordinates of the cursor at the start of the pinch gesture and zoom around that till it receives a non-pinch input.
- mourner 5y ago
  Yes, this is on our top list of issues to fix! https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js/issues/11158 https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js/issues/11158
  - divbzero 5y ago
    This is really cool! …was my first thought too after reading. Thanks for writing and posting.
scratcheee 5y ago
I'm curious how it would work out if you updated the projection center to match the view center in zoomed out maps? I can see a value in having a "stable" map that doesn't twist around as you move, but I think that would offer a good alternative for people trying to look at places that suffer from the traditional projection centers, and of course different trade offs make sense for different circumstance. But perhaps constantly reprojecting is too expensive?
- mourner 5y ago
  Exactly — this would require reprojecting on every frame, which is too expensive, while we designed the feature to only do this once when loading a tile.
Demiurge 5y ago
Is this ever coming to leaflet? Is adaptive projections something that can be done without WebGL?
- mourner 5y ago
  Unlikely — the feature is designed around vector rendering.
zestyping 5y ago
All I can say is this is really fucking impressive. When I played with the demo my jaw dropped. Amazing work!
flobosg 5y ago
I just wanted to say that I loved the bloopers at the end.
- mourner 5y ago
  This was my favorite part too! I think we should start a tradition of adding those to every devlog.
Acrobatic_Road 5y ago
When is this feature coming to an app near me?

It's great to see this improvement, and read about the development. The one issue that stuck out is that there is not enough (any?) "ease-in/ease-out" to the animation as it transitions from zooming to zooming and rotating. Ideally this would be much more continuous. The Anchorage example is jarring as it switches from one type of zoom to the other. As an observer, I should not be able to say "here's the moment where it changes".

fenfe1 5y ago

I guess this is more a feature request than a question - but do you have plans to support stenographic projections as well? I ask as I work for an Arctic/Antarctic research institute so most projections are unsuitable.

mourner 5y ago
Definitely something we want to explore more, although it's quite a challenge since most map data distribution systems including ours are built around Mercator tiles, which can't show anything beyond ~85 latitude degrees.
derekja 5y ago
I'd love to touch base on how you are handling this now.. I'm using a combination of geoserver, react, and openlayers for a Canadian Arctic 3573 projection. I'm derekja various places including Gmail. Thanks!

nixpulvis 5y ago

Are there live demos that could be embedded instead of (or in addition to) the animated gifs?

mourner 5y ago
Here's a live demo from our examples: https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/example/projections/ https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/example/projections/ We decided to go with live videos to demonstrate the concepts in motion, and because embedding WebGL vector maps on an already big page might slow it down quite a bit, but definitely something to consider more in the future.
- nixpulvis 5y ago
  Maybe just put a little click to start over it, thus indicating it's resource intensive. Not to give users flashbacks or anything, but as long as it isn't too big and/or was already downloaded, people should be happy.

scoopertrooper 5y ago

This is really cool! One issue I noticed though is that if you use gestures to zoom on a touch pad, then you'll end up in the wrong spot. For instance, I put my cursor on Sydney with a Lambert projection and pinch to zoom. As I pinch in, my cursor moves away from Sydney as the map rotates, so the centre of the map ends up at some other place. Ideally, it should cache the geographic coordinates of the cursor at the start of the pinch gesture and zoom around that till it receives a non-pinch input.

mourner 5y ago
Yes, this is on our top list of issues to fix! https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js/issues/11158 https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js/issues/11158
- divbzero 5y ago
  This is really cool! …was my first thought too after reading. Thanks for writing and posting.

scratcheee 5y ago

I'm curious how it would work out if you updated the projection center to match the view center in zoomed out maps? I can see a value in having a "stable" map that doesn't twist around as you move, but I think that would offer a good alternative for people trying to look at places that suffer from the traditional projection centers, and of course different trade offs make sense for different circumstance. But perhaps constantly reprojecting is too expensive?

mourner 5y ago
Exactly — this would require reprojecting on every frame, which is too expensive, while we designed the feature to only do this once when loading a tile.

Demiurge 5y ago

Is this ever coming to leaflet? Is adaptive projections something that can be done without WebGL?

mourner 5y ago
Unlikely — the feature is designed around vector rendering.

zestyping 5y ago

All I can say is this is really fucking impressive. When I played with the demo my jaw dropped. Amazing work!

flobosg 5y ago

I just wanted to say that I loved the bloopers at the end.

mourner 5y ago
This was my favorite part too! I think we should start a tradition of adding those to every devlog.

Acrobatic_Road 5y ago

When is this feature coming to an app near me?