[OSM-talk] Wrong scale in slippy map

[Juan Lucas Dominguez Rubio]

Jukka Rahkonen wrote:

> I believe also that the scale bar is not right. Distorsion is
> one thing, it makes Sweden (and Finland) to look visually
> ridiculous on the map,

At the deep zoom levels (zoom=6 and higher numbers), Sweden and
Finland don't look "large", because you don't see other countries
on the same screen.  At these deep zoom levels, the difference in
scale between the top and bottom of the screen is also small.

Google Maps uses the same map projection, as do all tile-based
online maps.  The projection is not the problem.  Google Maps
shows the correct scale and it changes as you pan north and south
within the same zoom level.  See for example
http://maps.google.com/?ll=57,17&z=6

At zoom=5 and lower numbers, where you see whole continents or the
whole world, Sweden and Finland look large in comparison to
Britain or Spain.  That is sad.  Perhaps a different projection
could be used for these zoom levels?  It would make the whole
system a lot more complicated.  Google Earth shows you a globe as
you zoom out, instead of the flat map in Google Maps.


--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se <http://aronsson.se/> 

===============================
 
Hi,

According to the Spherical Mercator projection, Sweden is about three times the size of Spain. Leave it or take it. If you take it, then the scale bar used in openstreetmap.org is right. So, strictly, Google maps front page is _not_ using the Spherical Mercator projection, it's only using its nice looks, not the scale that inevitably comes with it.

Regards,
Juan Lucas
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20090424/33b09f54/attachment.html>