| Why does Google maps use the inaccurate, ancient and distorted Mercator Projection? | jfricker | 8/3/09 10:49 PM | Dear Google Maps, Every time I see a "Powered By Google" website display the default Google world map, I wince and wonder "why does the most sophisticated information technology company in the world use the most distorted and archaic world map known |
| Re: Why does Google maps use the inaccurate, ancient and distorted Mercator Projection? | Joel H | 8/4/09 12:27 PM | Hi John - Thanks for the feedback. Maps uses Mercator because it preserves angles. The first launch of Maps actually did not use Mercator, and streets in high latitude places like Stockholm did not meet at right angles on the map the way they do in |
| Re: Why does Google maps use the inaccurate, ancient and distorted Mercator Projection? | Limerick | 9/26/09 4:54 AM | Hi Joel, Would it be possible to add to Metric and Statute Mile (=1609 meters), the possibility to choose Nautical Mille (=1852 meters). It's the maritime and aeronautic measure unit and it is used for long distance (around earth...). It should be |
| Re: Why does Google maps use the inaccurate, ancient and distorted Mercator Projection? | ticktrader | 12/10/09 2:37 PM | That is the most ridiculous response I've heard. It's a computer, you tell it what to do not the other way around. Your zoomed out projection of the world should use accurate projections and then switch to angle preserving projections as you zoom i |
| Re: Why does Google maps use the inaccurate, ancient and distorted Mercator Projection? | startswithj | 12/19/09 10:02 AM | Dear Google, Would it not be possible to use Mercator projection for city-level viewing, and use a more realistic, respectful projection such as Winkel Tripel for global-level viewing? Perhaps their might be a formula for transitioning between the t |
| Re: Why does Google maps use the inaccurate, ancient and distorted Mercator Projection? | dawalker | 12/22/09 2:44 PM | Projections such as Winkel Tripel are great for showing a single, static image. But even if it could be interpolated into a conformal projection at close zooms, panning the map wouldn't work right. One option would be to pan the whole image, which wo |
| Re: Why does Google maps use the inaccurate, ancient and distorted Mercator Projection? | TeslaFtw | 9/3/10 9:30 AM | all switch to quantum computers |
| Re: Why does Google maps use the inaccurate, ancient and distorted Mercator Projection? | VZoc | 3/7/11 1:50 PM | I'm taking a skipper course and will take the exam next Saturday. The Mercator projection is used by default for navigation and I'm glad to have been able to fiddle about while studying. My take is that maps are primarily used for navigation and tha |
| Re: Why does Google maps use the inaccurate, ancient and distorted Mercator Projection? | PatHadley | 6/4/11 12:35 PM | Hi, I understand your answer for the needs of the Google Maps environment - and that its actually quite a tricky computing problem to make a smooth transition during zooming..... However, the fact that the Spherical Mercator has been transposed ont |
| Re: Why does Google maps use the inaccurate, ancient and distorted Mercator Projection? | WhiteRabbit | 9/13/11 2:27 AM | By certain measures, such as area, the Mercator map is probably the most distorted, so the question is legitimate. All projections from a sphere to a plane are, of course, distorted. When you fix one kind of distortion, you increase another kind of |