When do terrain features become beyond belief?

[Deadshade]

Reality can get away with a lot because it doesn't have to justify its own plausibility.

Oh that is deeply wrong
The operationnal word is probability, not plausibility, and the Nature is strictly justifying it everywhere and all the time.
Every single event that we can observe in the Universe is governed by quantum mechanics and quantum mechanics fixes extremely accurately the probability of all of them.
So low probability events will be observed rarely and high probability events often. And the Nature was kind enough to justify to us why and how she was deciding which is which.

So people are not really free to define just on whim or personnal subjective experience what event is probable and what isn't.

Luckily the display of pixels on our screens belongs to the high probabilty events so that we can discuss reality on Internet

[Freodin]

I try to approach that from a completely different angle: our focus here is on cartography, not physics or geology.

Many people start from the assumption that any map has to be a completely correct representation of the depicted reality... and if they really want their map to be this way, they should have to keep up this priciple of "plausibility".

But maps in general (especially pre-modern maps) are not meant to be in this way. They show the image that the cartographer has of his object... and here there are no limits to fantasy.

[Wingshaw]

Yeah, I have to say, unfortunately, that I disagree with Deadshade, here. Science has taken us far, but we still don't know a lot about the universe. What I love most about cartography is that it is equal parts science and art. It must retain logic and consistency, but it also needs to be able to take some liberties for the sake of artistic/aesthetic consideration.

@Deadshade: Out of curiosity, where do you see the boundary between scientific accuracy and artistic licence?

THW

[Deadshade]

Ah there is a deep misunderstanding here !
I have not been talking about cartography at all. Nor about art.
I'd only remind that I stayed on topic - the OP asked when "things get too weird that they stop being realistic ?".
So I basically better defined how the frontier between "weird" and realistic can be objectively quantified with probabilities. That's true for everything, not only cartography and it surely helps to have a better idea about this boundary if one is interested in reality.

But to answer your specifically cartographic question THW.
I do not see any normalised boundary between art and science in a map.

What I see is a clear boundary between tastes - some people would like very realistic maps and they would draw tectonic plates, atmospheric Hadley cells, Wind directions, biomes function of temperature and humidity etc etc.
Clearly people with this taste would follow the laws of Nature (mechanics, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, biology etc) almost everywhere and the result will be something which is allowed by these laws with a very high probability.
One can call that (hyper) realistic.

Then other people would like maps that respect no such natural laws as we know them in our Universe. They would have "weird" mountains, too large rivers which separate, flying cities, deserts on equator etc etc. One can call that (hyper) fantastic.

There is no boundary, there is a continuous Spectrum going from the former towards the latter and everybody finds his own style and preferences somewhere in between.

Obviously I will never oppose the law of gravity to somebody who mapped a levitating city because he shows that he doesn't care
But if somebody wants to be as realistic as possible (like OP), then I may help with features and natural laws that he should respect to reach his target.

And in case that there still remains an ambiguity, I do not consider that any cartography style is objectively "better" than another. If somebody is good at fantasy maps but bad at realistic maps, he better sticks with the former. And vice-versa.

[Wingshaw]

Ah there is a deep misunderstanding here !
I have not been talking about cartography at all. Nor about art.
I'd only remind that I stayed on topic - the OP asked when "things get too weird that they stop being realistic ?".
So I basically better defined how the frontier between "weird" and realistic can be objectively quantified with probabilities. That's true for everything, not only cartography and it surely helps to have a better idea about this boundary if one is interested in reality.

...and everything else Deadshade said

I wish the like button still existed. This would be a perfect time to use it.

THW

[markem]

You know Deadshade - I wish those quantum mechanics would come out and fix my truck. I keep calling them but they say they have to be in two places at once and my truck would be a third ordinace which is outside of their field of concern. 8-P

And don't even get me started about that one guy who keeps playing around with string. He says he has some kind of a theory about why its important. :-}

To be on topic though - I think it is important to at least make something somewhat resemble what it is you are drawing. After all - you don't want people having to come and ask you "What is it?" A good example is the painting "A cow in a snow storm" which really is just a white washed canvas. Without the title you wouldn't get the joke or know why a white washed canvas was hanging in a museum and cost as much as it did. :-)

Salvador Dali made a point of making things not look like regular objects to see how far he could stretch normalcy. The thing is - even with the deformities the items still looked like what they were. To my mind, they still fell within the "realistic" area or actually "believable" range. Pablo Picasso though made some paintings that, IMHO, fall outside of the "believable" range. Like the "Cow in a Snow Storm" painting - it isn't until you are told what it is supposed to be that you actually CAN see the image.

So a vine is a vine - unless it looks like a flower. It is a flower then or still a vine? When a mountain looks like a skyscraper - does it become a skyscraper? Or is it still a mountain? Or a tree that looks more like a rocket - is it still a tree? Or will everyone go "Why is that rocket in the middle of the forest?" This is what I am wondering.

[Midgardsormr]

markem's next piece of work will be entitled "This is Not a Picture of a Map."

[markem]

Heh. Yeah. It will contain "This is not a tree", "This is not a river", and "This is not a mountain". Does that mean that mud slides and avalanches are nature's attempts to do a Salvador Dali painting?