[HN Gopher] Making The World's Most Detailed (Print) Maps ___________________________________________________________________ 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 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-07-26 23:00 UTC)