Deviating from Earth Norms in FT?

[Robbie]

Excellent...I managed to work around it...luckily for me I was able to 1 pixel edit everything near it and fixed all the big gaps...Though I hope when I get to the erosion and smoothing and rivers and whatnot, that edge won't cause me any grief...I've done WAY too much editing to change the north pole position now...unless you have any other ideas?

I decided to go with a different world. Here's a picture so far with all the editing I've done...I'm currently going around all the coastlines and getting rid of all the little coastal seas. Still more work to do...that tutorial is VERY helpful though.

[Robbie]

Got to the rivers part, and the edge problem seems to have reared its ugly head...bleh...any ideas now? left side of the two weird river lines is where the edge is...

Whats weird is if I zoom in so that both sides of the two weird lines aren't visible, the problem goes away...I'm guessing its a river vector problem?

Edit: Rerunning rivers with very fine resolution fixed the problem...nevermind...yay! Moving on.

[waldronate]

The problem with horzontal lines is a problem when subdividing the line segments to deal with the potentially curved projection. Using a projection with curved parallels should hide the problem that comes up sometimes as the horizontal lines as does recomputing the rivers at a slightly different resolution.

I dislike the default Equirectangular projection. I recommend the Hammer projection as a nice compromise projection. Also consider the Wagner VII projection or Orthographic (which looks like a globe viewed from infinity). Every projection has a purpose, you need to find one you like that meets your needs and use it.

[Robbie]

Yeah I figured out the situational stuff with the river error...no big deal...Only thing I'd use equirectangular for woul dbe for a google maps api overlay...

Or is Google maps a different projection than equirectangular? Since its square...maybe google maps is mercator?

[waldronate]

I have been looking at the Google Maps things lately and they appear to be using Mercator as the default projection, which is quite unfortunate as the Mercator projection is a navigation projection and not well suited for general use. (As an aside, Mercator-projection maps are popular only because there was a large surplus of them at the end of WWII and they made their way into schools because they were very cheap to obtain).

At first glance it appears that there might be a way to use different projections, but I need to look at the whole area in more detail in my copious free time.

[SeerBlue]

The first post in this thread
has a link to a few custom projections in google maps using custom imagery. The code is linked of the page, and the html/jscript can be viewed via "view source".
The google map google group is great for information, just follow the beginners guidelines and ask away, all in all they are very helpful.
Concerning applying custom projections you have to be pretty clear you mean custom projections for custom imagery, or you will get alot of replies that it can't be done, as most will think you mean using jscript to reproject Googles own imagery.
That is if YOU even need to ask, being a dev your self,,,,,me, I ask a lot.

this link brings up the gmap google groups entries for projections.
SeerBlue

edit; just found these, so I have not used them yet, tooooo much going on.
free tools for making google maps
this one cuts imagery
and this one makes google maps. this one also requires registration, free, but only takes a minute. available for windows,mac, linux.

[Robbie]

Yeah, SeerBlue, I started a project a while back that was going to be a "service" here on the guild where people could upload their maps, and the server side script would slice it and dice it into tiles, and serve the tiles through a google maps api...I've experimented quite a bit with the api, but never got around to doing the automation portion. I've not messed with projections though. I'll take a look.

Joe, if you could write a function for FT that would export 256x256 tiles at different zoom levels...you'd make a LOT of nerds like me VERY VERY happy campers.

Basically...mercator projection rendered at 256x256 would be the outer zoom level...and you'd just keep doubling it 512x512 (2x2), 1024x1024 (4x4), etc...etc...I would think it would be somewhat possible to do something like that right?