I’m kinda surprised there weren’t tons of countries against this. For its faults in representing size the Mercator projection is great at representing direction (that’s what it was intended for after all). For Japan, New Zealand, and even Austrailia this places North at really awkward angles, making what are in reality straight lines appear curved. If anything, this is even more euro centric than the Mercator projection due to the amount of straight line distortion applied being longitude dependent, centered around Europe. I’d also expect Russia to be against it since it makes them look smaller, even if they don’t have the same distortion problem as countries directly opposite Western Europe.
The projection should have been changed, but it should be a a compromise projection like Robinson or Winkel Tripel that doesn’t perfectly preserve area, distance, shape, or direction, but also doesn’t horribly distort any of them.
Yes but with the Mercator projection the distortion is not dependent on longitude, only latitude. So for any given arc changing the longitude of both endpoints equally simply moves the arc without altering its shape. Adding distortion with longitude in addition to the already present distortion with latitude doesn’t exactly make the problem any better in my opinion, as the arc now depends on an extra variable. With modern tech it’s pretty surprising they don’t just use a globe in UIs everywhere, but equal earth although good for representing size is just bad for directions. The grids cities are built on usually orient North/South, but for cities on the edge these become diagonal lines in the equal earth projection. Basically equal earth requires a choice of either accepting that all grids will no longer be oriented toward North on maps or dynamically adjusting the top of the map’s viewport to point North.
I’m kinda surprised there weren’t tons of countries against this. For its faults in representing size the Mercator projection is great at representing direction (that’s what it was intended for after all). For Japan, New Zealand, and even Austrailia this places North at really awkward angles, making what are in reality straight lines appear curved. If anything, this is even more euro centric than the Mercator projection due to the amount of straight line distortion applied being longitude dependent, centered around Europe. I’d also expect Russia to be against it since it makes them look smaller, even if they don’t have the same distortion problem as countries directly opposite Western Europe.
The projection should have been changed, but it should be a a compromise projection like Robinson or Winkel Tripel that doesn’t perfectly preserve area, distance, shape, or direction, but also doesn’t horribly distort any of them.
Totally unheard of before.
Yes but with the Mercator projection the distortion is not dependent on longitude, only latitude. So for any given arc changing the longitude of both endpoints equally simply moves the arc without altering its shape. Adding distortion with longitude in addition to the already present distortion with latitude doesn’t exactly make the problem any better in my opinion, as the arc now depends on an extra variable. With modern tech it’s pretty surprising they don’t just use a globe in UIs everywhere, but equal earth although good for representing size is just bad for directions. The grids cities are built on usually orient North/South, but for cities on the edge these become diagonal lines in the equal earth projection. Basically equal earth requires a choice of either accepting that all grids will no longer be oriented toward North on maps or dynamically adjusting the top of the map’s viewport to point North.