NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David C
Date: 2018 Aug 14, 19:55 -0700
Doing some more digging on the LINZ site I came across:
New Zealand Continental Shelf Lambert Conformal2000 (NZCS2000)
A Lambert conformal conic projection was chosen rather than the Transverse Mercator projection because the latter becomes excessively distorted when extended over large longitudinal ranges.
This is consistant with the earlier comments made about the use of the Lambert Conformal rather than the Mercator.
Frank wrote
The biggest change since 2005 is the substantial increase in computing power in all devices and especially the rise of separate GPU capabilities (chip-level graphics processing primarily for scene-rendering in simulated environments). Thirteen years ago, recalculating a map projection in every view and while scrolling a live-view was prohibitvely expensive. Now it's easy... So why not just roll the globe around? This is still a map projection, and it's an ancient one. The difference today is that the central point of projection can be "dialed" or scrolled to any location in an instant. It's an infinite number of global map projections, ready when you are.
The fact that NZ uses an NZTM2000 grid is probably becoming increasingly irrelevant. If I am lost I call for help and give my position in terms of the WGS84 datum. The duty person in the rescue centre spins the google earth globe and says 'Ahaa - that is where he is!" The rescue crews, whether they be on foot, in four wheel drive vehicles or in an aircraft are all carrying pocket super computers that direct them to my location. There is no need to project the spheroid onto a flat surface to plan the rescue.
