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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Google Maps restores Mercator Projection
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2019 Dec 14, 10:17 -0800
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2019 Dec 14, 10:17 -0800
Thanks David Pike, and Sean C, and David C.
You're right: there's a little button for it! Thank you.
But the default option is now back to "Mercator Projection," which they simply refer to as "2D", and that's a terrible shame. The so-called "globe" or "3D" option is a standard "Perspective Projection" --a "bird's eye view". Few users, few students would ever find it. So we're back to "Giant Greenland" and all the other terrible distortions of the Mercator projection and the limitations to latitudes below 85°, and the folks at Google can't even be bothered to say why. It's typical design-by-committee.
Frank Reed
Here's a GIF animation showing the difference when the button is clicked...
File:
