CWBP 2 Deciding the map

[Thurlor]

I'm not sure if anyone is interested but I have a couple of old world maps that I made and never used that I would be willing to present for use. Keep in mind that they are still unfinished (in terms of elevation data) and I won't bother finishing them unless they get shown some interest. I might also throw out some slightly modified worlds that are randomly generated.

Why the insistence on using the Mercator Projection? I've always considered it to be a butt ugly choice for world maps, however I quite like the Equirectangular Projection so maybe my opinion should be ignored. Anyway, because I am feeling exceptionally lazy at the moment my two entries will be remaining in Equirectangular Projection unless they get chosen or it turns out to be a real problem having them not be Mercator Projection. Sorry in advance if this is an issue.

Below I present my two 'designed' worlds. Please keep in mind that both are unfinished (the second more so than the first.

Entry 2:




Entry 3:

[Hai-Etlik]

Why the insistence on using the Mercator Projection? I've always considered it to be a butt ugly choice for world maps, however I quite like the Equirectangular Projection so maybe my opinion should be ignored.

Mercator allows you to chop out small sections and end up with something that has minimal distortion without reprojecting. All you need to do is apply a scale correction based on the latitude. That's why it's the projection used by zoomable web maps like Open Street Map and Google Maps. It does look horrible at the scale of continents though. Plate Carree/Equirectangular on the other hand looks ugly no matter what with the stretching it causes at the poles. About the only projection that's more ugly is Cylindrical Equal Area (Including Gall-Peters and Hobo-Dyers) which amplifies the stretching beyond that of Equidistant Cylindrical (Including Plate Carree/Equirectangular)

PS: Confused this with the other CWBP thread. In terms of prospective base maps, there's no particular reason to use Mercator. Plate Carree is probably the best choice as it's easy to reproject.