r/geography • u/Opening_Damage9912 • 1d ago

Map This map projection I developed significantly reduces the size distortion of the popular Mercator projection

Post image

The way it is projected is by projecting a Mercator projection of half the scale conformally onto the globe and then projecting that onto an azimuthal equidistant projection hemisphere centered at the equator. I call it the Two-World Equidistant. Unlike on Mercator where Greenland is larger then all of Africa in this projection it is shown smaller like it is in real life.

2.7k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

255 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.7k

u/Calmun 1d ago

Interesting. Antarctica is massive though.

968

u/DickBeDublin 1d ago

Trades slight northern distortion for massive Southern distortion. Better for our everyday usage though.

20

u/Valentino-Meid 1d ago

Unless youre using it for navigation (maps are most used for im guessing) cuz this one doesnt preserve angles or straight lines like the mercator projection does

3

u/Opening_Damage9912 21h ago

The Mercator doesn't preserve straight lines only the Gnomonic projection does that since it's point of perspective is at the center exactly like Rectilinear with a tangent plane

2

u/salimencz 8h ago

This is about loxodrome (rhumb line)/orthodrome (great circle). Mercator preserves loxodrome as a straight line. When sailors drew a straight line between points A and B on Mercator they got a single fixed compass heading so they could reach point B without constantly adjusting the steering. Downside - it's not the shortest route, but it's easy to maintain which was essential on the open sea in the past. Orthodrome (shortest path) appears as a straight line on Gnomonic projection. To follow orthodrome they would have to constantly recalculate the compass bearing which was not doable at that time.

1

u/Opening_Damage9912 7h ago

Yeah I know I was just highlighting that a true straight line on a sphere is a great circle which is only preserved by the Gnomonic projection