One constant irk I have with online map tools such as the venerable, decade old Google Maps, is that the projection is fixed. Most online mapping applications use what's known as "
Web Mercator" for their projection.
This works great for most all of my driving and walking around needs!
This doesn't work great for my exploring the world from my couch tasks...
As a simple example:
In this image Greenland is twice the size of the USA. In
reality, the USA is about 5x
larger than Greenland!
Hilarious side note: I put this post in the blog-queue 2 days ago, yet
IFLScience posted almost the exact same article as this yesterday... whoa. Kinda neat!
I'm sure you've seen this, but it's worth a post: https://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/poly/puzzledrag.html
ReplyDeleteSeeing in real time how much Mercator distorts the planet.