Digital maps:
* rely on precious battery charge and weight
* aren't very robust
* are extremely hard to use in the dark or with night vision
* can't be cut and folded into something small and light enough to hold in a hand
* when portable aren't large enough for displaying on a table or wall for people to gather around
But maps of all sorts are a dying breed, the bulk of the uses for maps were to find directions and turn-by-turn voice navigation has made the map component pretty much optional.
As for night vision, you mean when wearing vision enhancement optics? I did not fully understand you the first time, I thought you meant night vision as in 'night adapted eyes', where you'd lower the intensity as much as possible not to ruin your night vision. Not sure what the implications would be for electronically enhanced optics but if they use a display you could of course put the map straight on the display?
And how are you going to take a compass bearing off an image being beamed straight into your eyes?
And the problem with a digital map with a backlight is it lights you up like a beacon!
There was a cartoon on that subject where they re-invented paper as an improvement on the laptop. 'Can be read in full sunlight', 'lasts for 100's of years on a single charge', 'can be burned safely in a pinch' and so on.
You can open a paper map up and look at a hundred km squares at once at a resolution no display can match.
Why do you need to shine light on a backlight? You can read it directly at night.
>And you'd need a specially adapted display that used an IR backlight to use with night vision - I haven't seen something like that in practice. My smart watch has a night vision mode, but that's an LCD.
Who, aside the army uses night vision?
You can't use a backlight at night - you'd light yourself up like a beacon, and destroy your night vision adaptation.
Otherwise, I wouldn't go trekking/hiking at night either. Who does, so that that "map reading at night while maintaining night vision adaptation" to be a real non-outlier concern?
If the use case is reading a map at a campsite, e.g. to prepare for tomorrow's hike, then the "night vision adaptation" should not be that important, and a backlit map device would do just fine. And you can have the screen at low brightness and not mess (or not mess much) with your night vision adaptation.
Where do you napkin-estimate the percentage of people in the venn diagram AND of "uses maps", "need to read them at night", "need to maintain night vision adaptation while doing so", "has some night vision contraption to be able to read things they shine light on"?
Anyone doing alpine climbing will at some point start in the dark and/or return in the dark.
The range of activities where the arguments you made hold versus those in which they are not of concern is becoming ever narrower - I'd struggle to think of much beyond recreation/extreme environments/military examples, and these are very much a minority compared to the rest of the digital mapping world.
Don't get me wrong, I love paper maps too and have seen some pretty amazing examples - in the atrium of one facility I visited they had a two-storey high printed OS style map that was quite something - but the world has moved on. Perhaps e-ink displays will marry the two back together at some point.
And imo it's easier to unfold a full sized map which immediately displays a wide area, to get your bearings, as opposed to having to zoom/pan on a digital map.
Minor inconveniences but arguably a smoother experience. Of course when I sat digital map I'm pretty much referring to Google maps on a phone.
* weight a lot more than digital
* aren't robust to water, dirty, or even manipulation
* require extra equipment to read on the dark
* can be cut and folded, but lose usefulness on the process (I really don't get your claim that cell phones can't be hold in a hand)
But that last point is spot on. Ditto for the people talking about writing on the map (digital could improve on this front).
Anyway navigating a paper map requires some careful folding and unfolding that is quite slow, and you must carefully select what maps you'll bring every time, while for digital maps you just bring the entire continent.
I don't see how one can declare any of them a clear win. The answer depends too much on your use case.
You just laminate them.
I know, I know, IP ratings. Okay... good luck.
Totally agree that neither digital nor paper maps is a clear winner. Each use case has different requirements and sometimes digital is better and sometimes paper is.
You do not need extra equipment to read in the dark, you just need to not be standing next to a street lamp. Your eyes adjust quite well. If the moon is out you can read a map with sunglasses on. The moon is plenty bright enough to cast shadows and read by if there are no external light sources nearby.
If you use paper maps for any period of time, folding them becomes second nature, this is like saying that reading books takes too long compared to watching movies because you have to learn to read. On boats, navigational maps are rolled and there is dedicated space for unrolling them. Not all maps are used in the backcountry. Also maps come in bound formats called atlases which are quite convenient. Also Mapscos.
I feel like this post was written by someone who grew up in a post google maps world.
I didn't argue that they weren't waterproof. I laminate all my maps. I know they can be waterproof.
> You do not need extra equipment to read in the dark
Fundamentally, you're going to need a torch or image intensification on occasion. There can be not enough moonlight to read a map to any extent.
> If you use paper maps for any period of time, folding them becomes second nature
Yes that's what I argued was a benefit of them - that they can be folded easily.
> On boats, navigational maps are rolled and there is dedicated space for unrolling them
Yes that's what I argued was a benefit of them - that they can be displayed on a table.
> Not all maps are used in the backcountry.
Yes, I argued an advantage is being able to put them on the wall.
> I feel like this post was written by someone who grew up in a post google maps world.
I've spent hundreds of days operating by map alone all around the world. So, no.
I feel like you read my comment and somehow got the opposite understanding of every aspect. I was arguing that paper is better, and you've come in said no actually paper is better?