Total commoner here that does not understand projection and such on maps, but I know that the popular map and commercial globe somehow does not show the true size of a country/area.

My first question is, how could a globe (which supposed to be a representation of earth from space) does not represent true size of an area?

Second one, can we produce a map that shows the true size of an area but can also be used for navigation?

  • Orphie Baby@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think that sentence was a mistake. A globe is accurate. Well, more or less. Never seen a microscopically-accurate globe before. :P

    • waythewaythe@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I might have used wrong term here, what i mean is that if you go to thetruesize.com which claims to be showing the real size of the area/country, you can see that australia for example will be almost as big as russia, but its not the case in a globe. I wonder if i misunderstand these wrongly

      • Still@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        thetruesize’s idea is that you can drag the countries around and it simulates the project at that point in the map, so if you were to say drag the US onto Russia it would be scaled the same

        the project that most maps use maintain directionality at the cost of distorting size

      • IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        TheTrueSize.com still uses Mercator projection. You need to drag Australia and Russia to the equator to see their true size. The map around the equator has the minimum amount of distortion. Also on a globe if you put a tape measure against those two countries you’d see that Australia is about as tall as Russia