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Comment by marktani | Hacker News Reader

In Japan, physical maps like in parks and city information booths are oriented to be aligned with the actual geography. Meaning, north on the map points to actual north.

Made me think of how much more accurate the end to end process of putting up that map has to be vs. maps oriented by "north is up".

Just imagine the map needs to be moved by 10m and rotated around for some last minute restructuring of the park before finalizing the project.

Anyway, it was fun to read these maps and think about how many assumptions we carry around that are shaped by objects around us we use daily.

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This is similar to the modern car GPS question → do you always have the little arrow pointing up in the middle and the map rotates, or is the map still and the car rotates?

True! When I started driving, I was using the "north is always up" setting as it helped me get a better understanding of where I was in the city. Somehow this was more fun.

At some point I switched to the more common setting (I assume) of having the map rotate.

I still have my map as going in the direction I'm going. Being from Europe wind directions don't matter. The roads don't care.

Then the 3d view came out, and that got my preference, and I'm always hoping one day the clouds will represent actual weather.

Anyway, the first car I got when moving to the USA got one of those direction things in the mirror, and I actually started to force myself to think in those terms. It removes a lot of ambiguity when explaining things, for example: you then turn left is more ambiguous than you then turn West.

Good point is - "it helped me get a better understanding of where I was". That's repeated by many users having the "north is up" setup.

Certainly, if you have the other setting where your arrow is following the vehicle's direction, then what you see on the map is just an extension of what your eyes see already. While it might be very helpful in specific situations like crossroads and switching lanes, in general it doesn't help much when one wants to learn how things are interrelated in space around. "North is up" gives that. Mind has amazing capabilities of learing even when busy

Arrow points up, map is displayed with a slight perspective.

If there is no perspective, then at the very least, the car is about halfway between the middle of the screen and the bottom of it. I care far more about what's in front of me than what's behind me.

What I really hate is that the nav in my Tesla will typically show a perspective view while navigating, but as I approach a turn, it changes to a top-down view and zooms in, often to the point where the actual turn is no longer even on the screen, so I don't know where I'm actually supposed to go anymore.

Ouch! Whatever representation you agree on, the one thing you don't do is changing everything and throwing the driver out of their context at random.

And that applies to high-level apps (like a spam phone call) stealing the screen too.

Yeah, viewer up maps need be updated.

It just needs to me moved not rotated if it's horizontal though, those are not so uncommon either as physical/tactile minature models or maps on podestals, tables or on the floor even in europe.

Einnorden used to be quite a thing with paper maps in the field.

The term Orientation even goes back further referencing to the era of T and O maps in occidental Europe where east was up and where the sun rises and also of significance to Christianity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_and_O_map

Then again nobody seems to notice the Manhattan grid is actually not north up.

Local maps at streets in the UK are like that as well. I am too used to north always being up that I had to lean my head to comprehend them.

Reminds me of guide books. They probably do it to fit the maximum useful map on the quarter page they have allocated for it.

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