What is the upside of using an infinite canvas? I tried playing around with them in the past but I think my brain's mental model of how to parse data is incompatible with "clutter" (for lack of a better term) of an infinite canvas.
https://youtu.be/GblI7GI0jQ4?t=85
(Alas, the original desktop app (iMapping, in Java) as shown in the video is no longer being developed, and now they are only developing the web app (Infinitymaps) only run in the browser, which imo is not the best fit for infinite canvas apps which can be very resource-intensive)
Also see the app author's own all-purpose mega-map that he used to organize everything: https://youtu.be/bTQWL5wmdZY?si=6VrnPIErOzasisEe
I agree with you that I don't think it maps well to the mental model of the brain. Seeing the youtube video link in the sibling comment, when the user is completely zoomed out and can see everything, I just feel overwhelmed looking at it all. Maybe it's the nature of the boxes having different scales that you can't compare them as easily to each other compared to just a regular canvas where things just place in two dimensions. Each time you zoom into a canvas, the transition causes a lost sense of place and space, akin to walking into a doorway to a room and wondering why you walked there to begin with.