5 ms·

A Cloudless Atlas – How MapBox Aims to Make the World’s ‘Most Beautiful Map’

160 points by holic 13y ago

templaedhel 13y ago
When mapbox first launched tilemill was when I first discovered them. I read about them on here, and went to check it out. At the time I didn't really understand the value proposition. It was google maps without any of the useful API features like geocoding and routing. Plus they were using openstreetmap which at the time was lagging noticeably behind google data in my area [1]. Tilemill seemed nice, css to style maps. But google had a nice style wizard [2] that changed the maps on the clientside, no need to upload a custom tileset, which is what tilemill seemed to do. To be honest I generally forgot about them. But then google started charging more for their maps, and I remembered them as an alternative. I still missed the flexibly google had for their map styles though. However in the past week I've come to see them in a whole new light, in part due to this post, but also due to their vector map post [3] causing me to dig back in and play around. I now truly believe these guys are one of the coolest "underdog" startups I've encountered. They've been chugging along and have created some awesome advancements, or at least competitors in the online map space. I hope to continue seeing awesome work like this, those map images are gorgeous. My only request is that they give a little more detail into how to create custom styled maps like they show in the vector blog post I linked to. The process of using their street maps with custom styles is a little hazy to me right now, although maybe I'm missing something obvious. [1] It still does, but now only with minute details like service roads on the local university campus. [2] http://gmaps-samples-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/styledmaps/wizard/index.html http://gmaps-samples-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/styledmaps/... [3] http://mapbox.com/blog/vector-tiles/ http://mapbox.com/blog/vector-tiles/
- untog 13y ago
  I wrote a small guide to getting started with TileMill: http://blogging.alastair.is/i-had-no-idea-how-to-make-custom-maps-so-i-learnt-by-doing-you-should-too/ http://blogging.alastair.is/i-had-no-idea-how-to-make-custom... But it was written long before these vector improvements. I hope to find the time to work with them soon, they look awesome.
junto 13y ago
The map of the UK is simply stunning.
- arethuza 13y ago
  The fact that Central Scotland is a rift valley is particularly noticeable in that picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Lowlands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Lowlands
arethuza 13y ago
That image of the UK reminds me that what I would really like is something that allows me to dynamically combine different maps and/or images with something automatically aligning the images/maps appropriately. e.g. It would be great to blend that UK image, with a geological map with something like this image of the UK by night: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/article3622556.ece http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/article3622556.ece
- shubb 13y ago
  Look into Quantum GIS. It's an opensource tool that will let you do what you want (and more). A fair bit more flexible than Google Earth. Most geographic charts and images are in formats that include a locations/scale/alignment. Mixing different coordinate systems (global vs uk local ones) needs the right settings. Good luck! If you are looking to graphically align non-geostamped images, you should be able to figure out their corners by comparing them to a map with a known coordinate system, then use a .world file to specify that location stamp before importing them to Quantum GIS or whatever you use.
  - hnha 13y ago
    if the input data are georeferenced correctly then qgis will happily transform all layers to a common reference system if you check "on-the-fly" in the properties.
- sp332 13y ago
  NASA has an open-source project called WorldWind. It's like Google Earth with less features but a lot more layers. It's actually very hackable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_World_Wind#Add-ons_and_plugins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_World_Wind#Add-ons_and_pl...
smcl 13y ago
I'm starting to think we're stretching the definition of "beautiful" nowadays. I see it every other day describing js libraries etc and now this. The technical stuff behind this is interesting and sort-of impressive but "beautiful" is going a bit far.
- shubb 13y ago
  I find the maps they make really pretty, but the technical stuff doesn't quite deserve the hype. This seems like blue marble, which NASA did in 2005 (and every month since). That said it should yield a dataset with twice the resolution of Blue Marble, which is cool. The size of a pixel will be 250m, i.e. a small town will be 2 pixel, as opposed to 1 pixel. For high resolution imagery, you'd need to pay. There is 0.5m data out there, for about $5+ a kilometer, and I'd love NASA to dump a whole world data-set of this. But until then, I think Google and ESRI are safe. VERY LARGE FILE http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/73000/73751/world.topo.bathy.200407.3x21600x10800.jpg http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/73000/7375... NASA's blue marble.
  - 7952 13y ago
    What has been lacking in the past is an open source type effort to make derived datasets available. There are numerous commercial projects that process public domain data and resell it, but do not publish methods or make the data available for free. The community tend to use NASA datasets with known limitations, or commercial data with high entry pricing. There is a distinct lack of cost-free domain specific derived data.
  - gry 13y ago
    Blue marble is half the resolution MapBox is aiming for and also their goal is a generalized base layer. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5475899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5475899]
  - celoyd 13y ago
    Blue Marble was a big inspiration here, and we’ve had fun comparing notes with some of the people who made it. Blue Marble is, however, ten years old, and has a number of (justifiable) limitations. You can get a sense of these if you zoom in on its depictions of, say, the Niger Delta, or the northern tip of Greenland.
stbullard 13y ago
See also Mapbox's blog post on this from a month ago (with more images!) here: http://mapbox.com/blog/improving-mapbox-satellite-by-making-clouds-disappear http://mapbox.com/blog/improving-mapbox-satellite-by-making-... And HN discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5475571 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5475571
zokier 13y ago
> they needed to download two thirds of a terabyte of compressed data. “We’ve got 30 to 40 servers pulling down data from NASA,” 40 servers to download 600 gigabytes of data? Something does not sound right here. If they wanted to avoid overloading the nasa pipes, they could have asked nasa to fedex that amount on couple of hard-drives or something. At this day and age bulk transferring a terabyte or two of data should not be a challenge.
- daviddoran 13y ago
  I think it's fair to say that they thought it through. They also talked to NASA [1] so NASA would have told them if there was a better way (e.g. hard drive) than downloading over the net. [1] “We called them up and said, ‘hey we’re going to hit you hard, what’s the best way we can do it for you?’”
- dhotson 13y ago
  My guess would be they wanted to uncompress and process it in parallel? I doubt it was a question of bandwidth—probably more a question of convenience.
- celoyd 13y ago
  Heh, yes, we seriously considered the Honda Civic full of external drives option.[0] Some of our images were from NASA’s hot new GIBS[1] service, which was extremely fast. However, it’d only backfilled about 2/5 of the data we needed, so for the rest of it we were using a legacy endpoint that was launched around 2004ish and has some, let’s say, idiosyncratic caching and throttling systems. Instead of setting up a special channel, we talked to them and figured out how to shotgun the downloads in a way that wouldn’t kill their cache or require them to give us special treatment. We thought of this on a Friday and wanted to have it ready when we came in on Monday, and it worked. Thus the somewhat blunt methods. 0. For any young persons in the audience, the reference is to “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.” from Tanenbaum’s “Computer Networks”. 1. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about-eosdis/system-description/global-imagery-browse-services-gibs https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about-eosdis/system-description/g...
zokier 13y ago
Couple of sample images of this tech: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vruba/sets/72157631622037685/with/8088379965/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/vruba/sets/72157631622037685/wi... I kinda like this "average" picture, as it shows the snow/ice in a interesting way http://www.flickr.com/photos/vruba/7910717584/in/set-72157631622037685 http://www.flickr.com/photos/vruba/7910717584/in/set-7215763...
zokier 13y ago
Any ideas of the detail level/resolution? Based on the "5 billion pixels" statement, it sounds like it would be something like 150-300m/px, which doesn't sound very high-res to me. For large scale maps it probably makes stunning images, but is it suitable for google earth -like zooming and panning around?
- hnha 13y ago
  yes but only at the lower zoom levels ("far away"). they are working on higher ones later.
- celoyd 13y ago
  This release is down to zoom level 8, which is roughly 500 m to 1 km/px – what I think of as regional rather than local. You’re seeing mountain ranges and river valleys, not what you have planted in your garden. Right now with this project we’re thinking about how to serve people making small- to medium-scale maps on topics like global environmental issues, shipping, travel, etc. At higher zoom levels (higher resolutions), our more conventional satellite and aerial imagery seems to be meeting people’s needs for now.
s0rce 13y ago
With the information they have and how they processed it seems like they should have a rough snapshot of each season. It would be remarkable to be able to click a button and change the landscape from winter-spring-summer-fall.
xradionut 13y ago
I think it's awesome that they are using open data from NASA. I sometimes find myself skim through various open data sets and make list of possible projects/products with them.
- SiVal 13y ago
  Have you found any free vector maps that include political boundaries (countries, states, provinces, counties, cities)?
  - jasondavies 13y ago
    http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ http://www.naturalearthdata.com/
    - SiVal 13y ago
      +1 thanks

160 points by holic 13y ago

When mapbox first launched tilemill was when I first discovered them. I read about them on here, and went to check it out. At the time I didn't really understand the value proposition. It was google maps without any of the useful API features like geocoding and routing. Plus they were using openstreetmap which at the time was lagging noticeably behind google data in my area [1]. Tilemill seemed nice, css to style maps. But google had a nice style wizard [2] that changed the maps on the clientside, no need to upload a custom tileset, which is what tilemill seemed to do. To be honest I generally forgot about them. But then google started charging more for their maps, and I remembered them as an alternative. I still missed the flexibly google had for their map styles though. However in the past week I've come to see them in a whole new light, in part due to this post, but also due to their vector map post [3] causing me to dig back in and play around. I now truly believe these guys are one of the coolest "underdog" startups I've encountered. They've been chugging along and have created some awesome advancements, or at least competitors in the online map space. I hope to continue seeing awesome work like this, those map images are gorgeous. My only request is that they give a little more detail into how to create custom styled maps like they show in the vector blog post I linked to. The process of using their street maps with custom styles is a little hazy to me right now, although maybe I'm missing something obvious. [1] It still does, but now only with minute details like service roads on the local university campus. [2] http://gmaps-samples-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/styledmaps/wizard/index.html http://gmaps-samples-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/styledmaps/... [3] http://mapbox.com/blog/vector-tiles/ http://mapbox.com/blog/vector-tiles/

untog 13y ago
I wrote a small guide to getting started with TileMill: http://blogging.alastair.is/i-had-no-idea-how-to-make-custom-maps-so-i-learnt-by-doing-you-should-too/ http://blogging.alastair.is/i-had-no-idea-how-to-make-custom... But it was written long before these vector improvements. I hope to find the time to work with them soon, they look awesome.

junto 13y ago

The map of the UK is simply stunning.

arethuza 13y ago
The fact that Central Scotland is a rift valley is particularly noticeable in that picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Lowlands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Lowlands

arethuza 13y ago

That image of the UK reminds me that what I would really like is something that allows me to dynamically combine different maps and/or images with something automatically aligning the images/maps appropriately. e.g. It would be great to blend that UK image, with a geological map with something like this image of the UK by night: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/article3622556.ece http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/article3622556.ece

shubb 13y ago
Look into Quantum GIS. It's an opensource tool that will let you do what you want (and more). A fair bit more flexible than Google Earth. Most geographic charts and images are in formats that include a locations/scale/alignment. Mixing different coordinate systems (global vs uk local ones) needs the right settings. Good luck! If you are looking to graphically align non-geostamped images, you should be able to figure out their corners by comparing them to a map with a known coordinate system, then use a .world file to specify that location stamp before importing them to Quantum GIS or whatever you use.
- hnha 13y ago
  if the input data are georeferenced correctly then qgis will happily transform all layers to a common reference system if you check "on-the-fly" in the properties.
sp332 13y ago
NASA has an open-source project called WorldWind. It's like Google Earth with less features but a lot more layers. It's actually very hackable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_World_Wind#Add-ons_and_plugins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_World_Wind#Add-ons_and_pl...

smcl 13y ago

I'm starting to think we're stretching the definition of "beautiful" nowadays. I see it every other day describing js libraries etc and now this. The technical stuff behind this is interesting and sort-of impressive but "beautiful" is going a bit far.

shubb 13y ago
I find the maps they make really pretty, but the technical stuff doesn't quite deserve the hype. This seems like blue marble, which NASA did in 2005 (and every month since). That said it should yield a dataset with twice the resolution of Blue Marble, which is cool. The size of a pixel will be 250m, i.e. a small town will be 2 pixel, as opposed to 1 pixel. For high resolution imagery, you'd need to pay. There is 0.5m data out there, for about $5+ a kilometer, and I'd love NASA to dump a whole world data-set of this. But until then, I think Google and ESRI are safe. VERY LARGE FILE http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/73000/73751/world.topo.bathy.200407.3x21600x10800.jpg http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/73000/7375... NASA's blue marble.
- 7952 13y ago
  What has been lacking in the past is an open source type effort to make derived datasets available. There are numerous commercial projects that process public domain data and resell it, but do not publish methods or make the data available for free. The community tend to use NASA datasets with known limitations, or commercial data with high entry pricing. There is a distinct lack of cost-free domain specific derived data.
- gry 13y ago
  Blue marble is half the resolution MapBox is aiming for and also their goal is a generalized base layer. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5475899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5475899]
- celoyd 13y ago
  Blue Marble was a big inspiration here, and we’ve had fun comparing notes with some of the people who made it. Blue Marble is, however, ten years old, and has a number of (justifiable) limitations. You can get a sense of these if you zoom in on its depictions of, say, the Niger Delta, or the northern tip of Greenland.

stbullard 13y ago

See also Mapbox's blog post on this from a month ago (with more images!) here: http://mapbox.com/blog/improving-mapbox-satellite-by-making-clouds-disappear http://mapbox.com/blog/improving-mapbox-satellite-by-making-... And HN discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5475571 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5475571

zokier 13y ago

> they needed to download two thirds of a terabyte of compressed data. “We’ve got 30 to 40 servers pulling down data from NASA,” 40 servers to download 600 gigabytes of data? Something does not sound right here. If they wanted to avoid overloading the nasa pipes, they could have asked nasa to fedex that amount on couple of hard-drives or something. At this day and age bulk transferring a terabyte or two of data should not be a challenge.

daviddoran 13y ago
I think it's fair to say that they thought it through. They also talked to NASA [1] so NASA would have told them if there was a better way (e.g. hard drive) than downloading over the net. [1] “We called them up and said, ‘hey we’re going to hit you hard, what’s the best way we can do it for you?’”
dhotson 13y ago
My guess would be they wanted to uncompress and process it in parallel? I doubt it was a question of bandwidth—probably more a question of convenience.
celoyd 13y ago
Heh, yes, we seriously considered the Honda Civic full of external drives option.[0] Some of our images were from NASA’s hot new GIBS[1] service, which was extremely fast. However, it’d only backfilled about 2/5 of the data we needed, so for the rest of it we were using a legacy endpoint that was launched around 2004ish and has some, let’s say, idiosyncratic caching and throttling systems. Instead of setting up a special channel, we talked to them and figured out how to shotgun the downloads in a way that wouldn’t kill their cache or require them to give us special treatment. We thought of this on a Friday and wanted to have it ready when we came in on Monday, and it worked. Thus the somewhat blunt methods. 0. For any young persons in the audience, the reference is to “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.” from Tanenbaum’s “Computer Networks”. 1. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about-eosdis/system-description/global-imagery-browse-services-gibs https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about-eosdis/system-description/g...

zokier 13y ago

Couple of sample images of this tech: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vruba/sets/72157631622037685/with/8088379965/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/vruba/sets/72157631622037685/wi... I kinda like this "average" picture, as it shows the snow/ice in a interesting way http://www.flickr.com/photos/vruba/7910717584/in/set-72157631622037685 http://www.flickr.com/photos/vruba/7910717584/in/set-7215763...

zokier 13y ago

Any ideas of the detail level/resolution? Based on the "5 billion pixels" statement, it sounds like it would be something like 150-300m/px, which doesn't sound very high-res to me. For large scale maps it probably makes stunning images, but is it suitable for google earth -like zooming and panning around?

hnha 13y ago
yes but only at the lower zoom levels ("far away"). they are working on higher ones later.
celoyd 13y ago
This release is down to zoom level 8, which is roughly 500 m to 1 km/px – what I think of as regional rather than local. You’re seeing mountain ranges and river valleys, not what you have planted in your garden. Right now with this project we’re thinking about how to serve people making small- to medium-scale maps on topics like global environmental issues, shipping, travel, etc. At higher zoom levels (higher resolutions), our more conventional satellite and aerial imagery seems to be meeting people’s needs for now.

s0rce 13y ago

With the information they have and how they processed it seems like they should have a rough snapshot of each season. It would be remarkable to be able to click a button and change the landscape from winter-spring-summer-fall.

xradionut 13y ago

I think it's awesome that they are using open data from NASA. I sometimes find myself skim through various open data sets and make list of possible projects/products with them.

SiVal 13y ago
Have you found any free vector maps that include political boundaries (countries, states, provinces, counties, cities)?
- jasondavies 13y ago
  http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ http://www.naturalearthdata.com/
  - SiVal 13y ago
    +1 thanks