[jamesfe]

I was formerly a cartographer with the military; I have lots of experience with large format maps, both of the world and of single countries (usually Iraq). It was fun to read an article about a map that wasn't hastily tacked up on a wall with nails or duct tape.

A few notes:

- Paper sags over time. Good thing he mounted it to a board

- We printed on tyvek for water/rip proofing, which was interesting. It's surprisingly hard to rip.

- I would have chosen a different projection maybe, but only for purely aesthetics, not any scientific reason. If its hanging on a wall in your house because you want it, you have all the license in the world to do whatever.

- I can't tell, but did NZ make the cut?

- And I may not have used blue for areas in the corners that are not actually water.

What a great job though!

This reminded me of Colonels coming to me in the military saying - "I want all of Iraq on my wall at 1:50,000" and as a junior enlisted man saying something, very respectfully, like "Well, sir, Iraq is about 900km from top to bottom, so that's 900,000m, and at 1:50,000 that's about 18m from top to bottom. How high are your ceilings?"

[asavadatti]

Obligatory http://worldmapswithout.nz/

[rdc12]

Lists like this often include the Pandemic board game the bit of that one that I love is you look at the reverse of the tile with Oz on it, you can see New Zealand there. (It sort of wraps around, can't think of a better way to put this).

[dba7dba]

"This reminded me of Colonels coming to me in the military saying - "I want all of Iraq on my wall at 1:50,000" and as a junior enlisted man saying something, very respectfully, like "Well, sir, Iraq is about 900km from top to bottom, so that's 900,000m, and at 1:50,000 that's about 18m from top to bottom. How high are your ceilings?"

Ahaha... I am really curious though. What were their responses? Just do it? Or was it like, my wall is 5 meters high, so make maps that will fit that height?

What's your take on digital maps in military? I gather printed maps will be around a looong time because tablets just cannot match the usefulness of maps (at least at platoon/company level)?

Always amazed to hear from people of such diverse background and experience here and on the internet in general.

[remarkEon]

My experience with digital maps is that they were always a complement to my paper map, not a replacement. Sometimes you'd be traveling long distances and a 1:25,000 or 1:50,000 became too cumbersome to carry once you got out of the truck...so following along on a digital surface made some sense. But at present I think you're correct that digital maps aren't ready to replace the paper form at the tactical level. From a planning perspective, satellite overlays are extremely useful and taking a printed version of selected imagery with me on a patrol happened pretty much every time, especially if we were looking for something specific or searching buildings etc. Platoon leaders end up getting pretty good at arts and crafts...we'd spend a lot of time cutting and pasting maps and imagery together to get something as useful as possible, but just small enough that it wasn't too terrible to have in your cargo pocket or tucked into your plate carrier.

[dettervt]

If you look at the very bottom corner of http://www.dominik-schwarz.net/potpourri/worldmap/images/DSC... it looks like NZ was included, you can just see the Auckland area.

[cookrn]

Yep! NZ is also visible in http://www.dominik-schwarz.net/potpourri/worldmap/images/DSC...

[amscanne]

Out of curiosity, what projection would you go with?

[oh_sigh]

Dymaxion would be disorienting but it would certainly get you thinking

Example: http://basementgeographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/uap...

[jacobolus]

This is the projection I’ve been working on for the past few weeks, a conformal spinoff of Cahill’s maps from the early 20th century:

http://i.imgur.com/Y6ki0l9.jpg

I think it’ll be great for a map where the triangular sections are each about a meter on a side (1:10M scale), or perhaps half a meter on a side (1:20M scale).

[liotier]

I like Kavrayskiy VII as a good compromise projection fit for a rectangular print - just cut out the South Pole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavrayskiy_VII_projection

[brc]

My father in law was a cartographer by trade, he got started when conscripted into the Vietnam war, and continued in mapping and cartography for his entire career. He spent his entire service producing detailed maps of Vietnam from a very long way away. All hand drawn. I've seen a couple of pieces of his work, it's awesomely detailed. They were shipping out new maps on a very frequent basis.

[chrissyb]

I've experimented with printing to tyvek before on a Canon ipf700 but I was using standard colorjet pigments which do not adhere to the tyvek.

I tried ringing around to see if I could source inks that would work with tyvek to use with this machine, but inks are expensive and i'd probably need a whole new dedicated printhead. In short I gave up.

What kind of resolutions were you able to achieve on Tyvek?

[bbcbasic]

Obligatory https://xkcd.com/977/

[pippy]

A projection I'm fond of, but is almost unheard of is the Kavrayskiy projection:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavrayskiy_VII_projection

It solves most projection issues without looking terrible.

[Turing_Machine]

"We printed on tyvek for water/rip proofing, which was interesting. It's surprisingly hard to rip."

I've often wondered why children's books aren't printed on tyvek, but perhaps publishers see lack of durability as a feature rather than a bug.

[ars]

Some are: http://www.indestructiblesinc.com/

[chrissyb]

I wanted to start up something like this a couple of years ago called BeachBooks or something, reading a waterproof book while floating in a ocean or pool would be unreal. I have no idea how you would ever sell publishers this idea though!

[Turing_Machine]

Nice.

[lakeeffect]

Like the invention of the dust jacket, the delicate protector.

[freyfogle]

if you want water/rip proffing, allow me to introduce http://www.splash-maps.com