[HN Gopher] Making The World's Most Detailed (Print) Maps
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Making The World's Most Detailed (Print) Maps
Author : mparr4
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-07-26 21:05 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ramblemaps.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ramblemaps.com)
| filleokus wrote:
| Really cool looking maps! Most printed large format things I see
| every day definitely looks worse than e.g 5K iMac screens when
| you get closer than a couple of feet from it. Would be cool to
| see something like this IRL
|
| I wonder if it's possible to use something like photolithography
| to create incredibly high dpi "3D prints" for elevation maps like
| this? Maybe some parts would look flat, but you would be able to
| discern elevation based on touch?
| mparr4 wrote:
| Thanks! Yea, I think we are as close as wall art can get to a
| high quality screen - we optimize for contrast on the print.
| And while unlike a screen you need to provide light for a
| print, the effect of the light on the print is pretty engaging.
| It changes as you move around it. (It is not, please nobody buy
| one thinking they are!)
|
| If you're ever looking to print some photos to hang on your
| wall, it's definitely worth considering metallic paper + face
| mounted acrylic glass. It has unrivaled "pop" among print
| options.
|
| I don't know much about photolithography, but a quick search is
| intriguing. I'll have to put it on my to-learn-about list.
| heyflyguy wrote:
| Do you have any plans to create 3d modeled maps that are printed
| on top of 3d printed plastics or sands? I am in the imagery
| business and have so many people ask for this, I've pondered what
| it would take many times.
|
| Neat product!
| jpxw wrote:
| Some (unsolicited) advice (this is HN after all): there's a typo
| in this post (human's should be humans). There are other more
| subtle grammar issues in the post, too. Some of the language on
| the front page could be tightened up too.
|
| The product looks awesome though. I'd probably buy one if I lived
| in the US.
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| Do your state maps show cities? From the pics it looked like they
| only show natural features.
| mparr4 wrote:
| Nope, the state maps are pure elevation maps. We do have some
| city maps and are working on more right now (Seattle and LA are
| in progress).
| mparr4 wrote:
| Ramble Maps co-owner here. Happy to answer any questions about
| our process or our maps.
|
| Co-owner and I are long-time HNers. Psyched to be on the front
| page!
| pottertheotter wrote:
| Did you two meet through HN?
| mparr4 wrote:
| Nope. We are friends from high school. He found PGs essays in
| 2009 and we started our first company together in 2010.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Your contiguous US-states map (and it seems many of your other
| maps, though not e.g. the North America map or the world map)
| uses a cylindrical map projection:
| https://ramblemaps.com/continental-us-map
|
| This is uncommon (and in my opinion generally a poor choice).
| What made you settle on that one? Or was it just the existing
| projection of the data, and you decided not to reproject it?
| neolog wrote:
| What kind of processing do you do on the data before printing?
| mparr4 wrote:
| I plan to write another post on that with some images to show
| the steps, but the process differs a bit between our
| black+white and our satellite+hillshade images.
|
| For the black and white, we pull in the relevant elevation
| models, merging various sources as necessary, compose the map
| (rotate if it helps), choose hillshade angle to highlight
| desired terrain, then export to photoshop.
|
| Having been doing this for a while now we spend most of our
| time in Photoshop, adjusting color curves and healing
| irregularities (there seem to be more for LiDAR than for the
| standard 1/3 arc second DEM).
|
| For our satellite + hillshade maps the process is a bit more
| involved. We actually remove the natural hillshade from the
| source image and add our own. This helps with perception of
| terrain (humans tend to perceive terrain as inverted if the
| sunlight is coming from the bottom of the image) and allows
| us to really play off the metallic print and get some pop.
| Even more photoshopping for these "maps."
| AdamTReineke wrote:
| What's the source for your LIDAR data? Publicly available
| government sets or do you have to commission your own scans?
| mparr4 wrote:
| All public. At this point if the data doesn't exist, we're
| out of luck.
|
| I don't anticipate wall art being lucrative enough to
| commission our own scans. For areas the size of what we tend
| to map you need an airplane, a drone would take weeks to
| survey some of them.
| Archelaos wrote:
| I am not a native English speaker, but I am wondering, why you
| call the printings "maps". Aren't they rather high resolution
| satellite images? Wikipedia defines a map as "a symbolic
| depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some
| space, such as objects, regions, or themes."[1]
|
| And are your images really more detailled than cadastral maps
| (scale 1:1000) that are nowadays recording the location of a
| boundary stones with a maximum deviation of +-3 to 5 cm?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map
| ghaff wrote:
| These aren't simply photographs but they do seem to fall on
| the photographic, rather than the map, end of the scale.
| Raven Maps is a good source of (large) high quality maps that
| are more traditionally map-like--though some of theirs are
| pretty photographically oriented as well.
| mparr4 wrote:
| Our black and white images (such as the image on the linked
| article) aren't satellite images at all, they are high
| resolution elevation models that we've used GIS software to
| light and create hillshade.
|
| We do have some color images that use satellite imagery and
| the creation of those images is going to be the subject of my
| next post. We do things like remove the natural hillshade and
| apply our own (due to a quirk of human perception where sun
| coming from below causes terrain to be perceived as inverted)
| and blending images from different days, etc.
|
| Re: is this really a "map?" That's a comment we get quite a
| bit, especially in FB comments on our ads. These images are
| not traditional maps, but a map is a
| depiction/representation, which these are. Anyway, "map" is
| certainly shorter than "visual representation of a geographic
| area" so it's what we go with.
|
| Re: detail. It's all about the size of the area you are
| printing. Our world map uses 30-meter data, but you'd need to
| print it on the side of a building to see the limit to the
| detail. So in our sizes, using 3-5cm data wouldn't improve
| the maps, you wouldn't be able to see any of that detail. We
| only make maps if that is true.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > ... they are high resolution elevation models that we've
| used GIS software to light and create hillshade.
|
| > ... These images are not traditional maps, but a map is a
| depiction/representation, which these are. Anyway, "map" is
| certainly shorter than "visual representation of a
| geographic area" so it's what we go with.
|
| Okay, that makes sense to a certain degree. Seems what you
| are doing is innovative enough that it deserves a new
| category of "map".
|
| Have you considered transfering your methods from the macro
| to the micro world? If I understand it correctly, you could
| in principle inverse the zoom factors, like using the
| elevation model of a coin combined with texture data and a
| lighting model and printing a much larger version of it on
| a canvas.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| Have you considered printing at imagesetter resolutions like
| 2540 and including a magnifier a la the compact OED?
| mparr4 wrote:
| I have not. If there's a market for it, I'd do it, but I
| would guess there isn't.
|
| Might be a cool experiment to try for a map. If nothing else,
| it sounds fun.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| I think it could be really amazing for some of your really
| big maps if you could walk into a room and go "whoa, that's
| a seriously detailed map" and then get handed the magnifier
| and go even deeper. Even if you only had super-resolution
| data for some of the big features stitched in.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| A raw piece of imagesetter film behind glass or acrylic
| and in front of a white background would probably look
| pretty cool (great contrast), although you'd have some
| mechanical challenges getting it mounted without bubbles.
| It may require a fairly thick piece of glass to get
| enough pressure in the center, and it may require a bezel
| so you can clamp/glue it to the backing securely.
| bujak300 wrote:
| Amazing. I miss the Alps, would buy them in a heartbeat
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