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Comment by michalc | Hacker News Reader

I’ve posted this on HN before, but my own “brain reboot” came from making

http://projections.charemza.name/

that allows you to rotate the world before applying the Mercator projection. The “crazy looking” distortions make me realise just how distorted the usual projection itself is

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It would be nice if there was a globe, with the center of the projection facing the user. Once you start rotating the map, it is really difficult to make sense of what is going on.

Other than that, it is really cool, and quite trippy to play with.

Ah for me the lack of sense of what’s going on is sort of the point of it. The rotated projections are just as right as the regular Mercator projection in an objective way, but it really doesn’t feel that way.

That was exactly what I thought too. I kept trying to make the map seem “normal” but no matter when I tried some thing was always blown so far out of perspective it was unrecognizable. Every projection is so far off that it just becomes comical. At that point it clicked that the Mercator projection is just as bad, I’ve just seen it before.

https://ibb.co/BVfgYj2

This is the best I could do, and it's pretty much just putting the vast empty expanses of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in the higher-distortion areas near the top and bottom.

it's a very neat map

> Every projection is so far off that it just becomes comical.

Except Lambert and Albers.

They become conical.

> Mercator projection in an objective way

Only if you drop the objective reason (navigation) that the Mercator projection was made.

That's very cool. I don't know if it is quite fair to the Mercator projection though because it mostly distorts the north and south poles which are conveniently not very populated.

You should add other projections for comparison!

I think other projections have been on my mental todo list for about 5 years now… one day!

Very smooth, well done!

Thanks!

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