Oculi Mundi collection of rare and ancient maps | Hacker News Reader

Oculi Mundi collection of rare and ancient maps

oculi-mundi.com

62 pointsbryanrasmussen21 comments

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Interesting that a group so interested in maps and navigation has such an unintuitive and inaccessible website.

Cool pictures, if you can get to them.

If you flip it from "Explore" to "Research", the UI becomes a lot more practical.

I think the interests in these are

1. historical

2. how things can go wrong / be misunderstood in systems of human knowledge.

3. cartography that is beautiful.

with #3 probably the most important - I think the site is beautiful, but only if you can disagree that design is only beautiful if it is functional (emphasis on the only there)

They should add one more map: of their website.

Using ?viewingMode=research makes it much easier to use: https://oculi-mundi.com/collection?viewingMode=research

Lovely interface. Also terrible.

Looked fancy, but trying to use it caused me to close the window quickly. Any chance there is dumber ui for same database?

The hamburger menu has a "viewing mode" option, under which lies a "research" toggle. The UI there might be more to your liking.

Sir, thank you!

I also got this love/hate impression. It's beautiful, but frustrating. I love maps in general, but couldn't bear the interface beyond opening just one map and then basically rage-closing the tab.

Somewhere between marvelous and needs more work. While I’m complaining about inconsequential details, what is with the tracking cookies?

I did some research on what "The eyes of the world" actually means in different contexts, since it shows up in power metal a lot, without much real explanation on what it means to "Look through the eyes of the world", but never quite found a solid answer.

I always chose to read it as meaning that one should have empathy for everyone (or almost everyone, this is metal after all!) including for the natural world.

Or perhaps, that we should look at things which are bigger than our individual Facebook group chat drama squabbles.

I feel like I'm navigating a Flash website cerca 2008

Encarta vibes...

The "Research" mode should be the default, the other UI is too damn convoluted, i am not playing a game

I am pretty happy that they included "research" mode and to make it easy to switch.

That is how I thought the presentation should look like A big thumbs up for that.

The first presentation I was not able to figure out or get working.

I always loved maps, especially ancient maps. I wonder if there's any book that would have a great collection of these. Kind of like a catalog of antique maps.

I was trying to look at ancient ones but the "early maps" filter isn't working for me or there aren't any on this website. Does it work for you?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37380100

That's a very nice website. I like the exploration mode.

The interface couldn't be any worse, alas!

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