Messages

46

Rome - Total Realism / Re: A New Map?

« on: September 18, 2016, 07:43:13 PM »

@ Xeofox,
I'm not quite sure about your reservations. As you know most gis datasource provide their data in latitude-longitude format. That includes elevation, coastlines, rivers, places and the available dataset on ancient places, roadsystems and so on. Any self respecting GIS will allow you to define your projection according to your needs. Qgis definitely supports the kind of projection used by Google Earth or something very much like it. The GIS I use certainly does. So, I do not see why opting for one projection over another would affect the availability of geographical data? The question at hand is, knowing we can choose any projection system we want, which suits your goals best? The orthogonal and (other) perspective projections have the advantage that the area the map is centered on has the highest resolution and this can be used to compress the periphery where in this case is either "dead space" like Siberia or the Sahara, or a series of regions that currently are rather larger than the others.   

Btw, my background is physical geograpy, so my focus in GIS tends to be primarily on the physical environment and on rasterized data.  However, I'd love to work on a map that faithfully incorporates historical geography as much as possible. For RTR VII I managed the accurate placing of settlements allright, but there are a couple of aspects that I never got quite around to doing well, mainly concerning the infrastructure and land use. 

47

Rome - Total Realism / Re: A New Map?

« on: September 17, 2016, 07:29:12 PM »

But what projection (if any!) is it? Anyway, I used it as an example of how to build terrain..........but from the op it's clear it's not a finished article. The 80/20 rule definitely applies here: it's not that hard to create something that looks allright, but to make it work, with regions and all is a whole different ball game.

As for projections. Google earth uses orthographic projection or something close to it. How about something like this. It keeps the focus on the mediterranean, but does add the east, albeit increasingly compressed the further you go.  To add more of it, shift the focus of the map a bit further east and more rolls into view.

I suggest you all have a look at it and see if there's a cut out that meets your needs.

48

Rome - Total Realism / Re: A New Map?

« on: September 17, 2016, 01:18:40 PM »

The problem with doing anything manually to the shape of the map is that it very much complicates combining data from different sources and placing stuff on the map based on real world coordinates.

The needed compression ins't just a north south thing either. Ahowl mentioned to me wanting to have Lake Baikal on the map, which would also necessitate compression in the west- east direction, especially the nearer you get to the eastern boundary.   

As for the looks of other maps, I wouldn't take that as a reference. I think quite a few are the result of tagging stuff onto an originally smaller map, with little consideration for the overal design.

49

Rome - Total Realism / Re: A New Map?

« on: September 16, 2016, 11:40:41 PM »

Hi guys, tnx for the invite.

So here's the thing with these massive maps. The level of detail in things like regions tends to vary tremendously across the map, with usually the highest density of regions in Greece and around the mediterranean, larger but fairly consistently sized regions around that (Gaul, Iberian peninsula, Anatolia) and even bigger regions beyond that towards the north and east.

So, ideally a projection would have high detail on a central area, dropping off towards the perifery. Perhaps something like an orthogonal map centered on Greece (Lat 38, Lon 22) : http://kartograph.org/showcase/projections/#ortho ?

Now it would be tempting to rotate the cut-out to get rid of "dead space". On the other hand,  the diagonal is the longest axis of the map and from that perspective it would be best to align that, and not the horizontal,  with the main "area of interest".