That map is using Stereographic projections. It distorts area (making things bigger as you move away from the centre) but preserves angles (you can sort of think of it as preserving shape). The straight evenly spaced parallels you have in the first post indicate Orthographic projections (essentially like photos from infinitely far away) This also distorts areas, but does so the opposite way around (making things smaller as you move away from the centre) and severely distorts shapes.Originally Posted by urxed
1. Yeah, I've been thinking about that - the only problem is that with no polar landmasses the average temp. of the planet (comparing with earth) rises significantly. I don't know if that is a problem. I'm also going for semi-supercontinent: I would like to have one or two pieces of major land mass. Maybe I'll go for some kind of "ring" world (I've been into that before... in the crescent world).
2. Yeah, absolutely. That was just a minor detail I did when I had some spare time over. Generally I'm looking for some kind of neo-atlas style with scientific feel - I'm not going all out science though, my knowledge is not enough. But that map will be for me to look upon so that I can flesh out good stories and so on. I'll be creating other maps of areas throughout the world in a "old style" manner (I love this style:
).
(3). Well, I don't really care about the right projections or if it's distorted or not - I just like the feel of it when it is portrayed as a planet. I find it gives a better view of how large/small things are. When looking at an atlas map of earth you don't really understand how humongous some of the oceans really are, such details looks better in a "fake" planetary style. I might just put it on a flat area map later on though.
Any of these projections are flat. That's the point, they project the globe onto a flat map. If you mean you want to use a cylindrical projection later (comes out as a rectangle) then you really do have to get this stuff right from the beginning or you will be in for nothing but pain later and you'll have to start over almost from scratch. If you want both cylindrical and hemispherical, it would be easiest to do the cylindrical one first.
Also, hemispherical maps are not fake, at least not inherently. This goes equally for Stereographic or Orthographic. What would make it fake is if you do it wrong, which is of course fine if all you really want is a pretty picture and don't want to worry about all this cartography stuff.
Orthographic just isn't particularly suited to reference maps like this since the severe distortion of shape can make it hard to recognize things. It's more useful for locator maps like locator insets or the country locator maps on Wikipedia. If you want to do Stereographic instead (Like the above map), I have a template you could use: http://www.cartographersguild.com/ma...-template.html
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