+1 I also think they have multiple levels of detail and render the appropriate one based on distance/view.
Should have said so though, as is, it's full of misleading statements (often by omission).
That is also the explanation they gave in the video. When they say "wrong or misleading", are referring to the fact that this is not always obvious when this projection is used, so it can make people think they can actually compare areas with it.
How can that be the case? Even with a range of detail, the points on a map have to represent one of a fairly limited selection of types. Even if you keep it high level like "buildings", "roads", etc. it's still a massive improvement over having no layers whatsoever.
When looking at these then/now renderings, one needs to take into account, that only very little of the actual data is rendered on those maps.
The database contains an incredible level of detail which can be used in completely different contexts and I'd say what's rendered is roughly only 1/10th of the data
Yeah, it would look very much like messy islands/mountains, probably lots of extra lines for little helpful effect. That is why the height map occurred to me. But, like I said, that might be getting too close to flashy, spinning-whizzbang infographic land.
> ... they are high resolution elevation models that we've used GIS software to light and create hillshade.
> ... These images are not traditional maps, but a map is a depiction/representation, which these are. Anyway, "map" is certainly shorter than "visual representation of a geographic area" so it's what we go with.
Okay, that makes sense to a certain degree. Seems what you are doing is innovative enough that it deserves a new category of "map".
Have you considered transfering your methods from the macro to the micro world? If I understand it correctly, you could in principle inverse the zoom factors, like using the elevation model of a coin combined with texture data and a lighting model and printing a much larger version of it on a canvas.
This criticism only applies when zoomed out. It provides a lot more information than "where the people are" when sufficiently zoomed in on a specific location.
If they had more detailed locations like at the city level, then a map would be far more useful. But since it's mostly just by country, then it actually gives off the wrong impression.
That's an interesting and commonly occurring case for this kind of map. I wonder if the visualization would be improved by introducing visual connections between points that are nearby, and/or painting barriers between points that are close in the map but far away in reality.
> The ideal projection is simply 3D, as it accounts for all scales
Unless you have 3D display that is not really true, it is still projected to 2D; perspective projection is still projection and it is not obvious that it's in any way "ideal" for maps
> Does not the earth viewed from space indicate true shapes, distances, and areas?
Of course not. A perspective projection distorts "true" shapes, sizes, and distances more than any other common choice of map projection, and in addition leaves more than half of the globe out of sight.
They did indeed design it with more details. It's just that Google Earth is not a perfect presentation medium (compared to offline rendering from local files):
I'm not convinced the 3D map isn't the most illustrative and compelling graph of them all. It says way more than the sprinkle of hard-to-parse dots does.
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