Comments on: Maptastic

Maptastic

iffley — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 17:47:06 -0800

Aerial photos. Maps. Overlaid. Fantastic.

By: johnnydark

johnnydark — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:09:44 -0800

Wow.

By: Alylex

Alylex — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:12:39 -0800

I miss London. I love London. [/yearning sigh]

By: zpousman

zpousman — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:16:01 -0800

This technique, if anybody wants to do further research, is called a "Magic Lens." It was developed at Xerox Parc in the 1990s and it's a solution that's really intuitive and natural, but one that's not achieved wide usage. I do agree that this is quite a nice little site.

By: iconomy

iconomy — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:20:27 -0800

This is fantastic! I feel like I have a secret decoder ring, or something. It brings to mind those encyclopaedias we all used to have, the ones with clear plastic overlays with parts of maps drawn on them. My human body book had the same thing, the clear plastic overlays - we'd spend hours flipping them back and forth, revealing and hiding various body systems. Very cool, iffley - thanks. I wish there were more countries, although this is a nice start.

By: ntk

ntk — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:32:17 -0800

If you look closely at the top right, is that the London Eye, laid flat in the river as it was when they were constructing it?

By: alumshubby

alumshubby — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:33:10 -0800

I wouldn't half mind seeing the continental US shown this way.

By: kurumi

kurumi — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:40:44 -0800

Brilliantly done. Different map bases were used for many of the zoom levels: much better than just digitally zooming a single map. At the M25/M1 interchange (hey, I'm a roadgeek), I saw at least four different maps, each with an appropriate level of detail for that zoom level. And alignment was spot on.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:43:52 -0800

Hey... nifty.

By: TimeFactor

TimeFactor — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:46:59 -0800

What especially amazes me is that the panning of the map overlay is done entirely by Javascript; I had to look at the source to convince myself that it really wasn't Flash or a Java applet.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:57:00 -0800

TimeFactor: You should check out some of the JavaScript API's that have been around for, well, years now. Multiple tracked overlayed layering isn't as difficult as it might seem, provided you're not hand-coding all the different browser quirks yourself. DynAPI is one of my favorites.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 19:10:01 -0800

This is amazing. I want it for Paris, Moscow... everything!

By: headspace

headspace — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 19:33:18 -0800

This is *so* awesome. Thank you for sharing; I have to go find Asbury and Stonehenge now!

By: 327.ca

327.ca — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 19:47:01 -0800

This is so cool! I lived in Oxshott for a year when I was a kid and it blows my mind being able to zoom in on the Oxshott Common, a parcel of land originally set aside by Henry VIII for hunting, and a magnificent place for a 12-year-old to roam. I would love to see a third dimension -- historical maps superimposed over aerial photos. Great stuff!

By: shoepal

shoepal — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 19:51:51 -0800

There's just something about that magic lens!

By: dasibiter

dasibiter — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 20:02:06 -0800

World Wind is a bit of a download but very fun to play with. When looking at the USGS images it takes a while for a decent resolution to load but the result is rather nifty indeed.

By: tss

tss — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 20:47:16 -0800

Don't forget the difficult-to-use seamless.usgs.gov!

By: ph00dz

ph00dz — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 20:57:44 -0800

They should put this kind of functional on the national map.

By: louigi

louigi — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 21:04:26 -0800

fucking brilliant.

By: arha

arha — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 22:12:30 -0800

Neat. Found my old house and now I'm London-sick.

By: RylandDotNet

RylandDotNet — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 00:34:18 -0800

Very cool.

By: jb

jb — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 00:47:17 -0800

This is very good - the only shame is that a few years ago, you could save the arial photos, and make a composite arial photo of an entire place by piecing them together.

By: salmacis

salmacis — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 01:16:08 -0800

This is very old. I've been using getmapping for years. This is my house. I'm intrigued about the comments about a map overlay though. I only see an aerial map. There's a link to show a map instead. Is this something that only works on Internet Explorer?

By: salmacis

salmacis — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 02:06:47 -0800

Ah, I've got it now! (For some reason, it's not working with Opera, but works for Firefox and Konqueror.) Freaky! And just for good measure, West Bromwich Albion F.C. (before they redeveloped the East Stand.)

By: i_cola

i_cola — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 03:28:43 -0800

In terms of UK maps I always prefer Streetmap as they give you a bigger area with less clutter, but this is very cool. Now can anyone work out how to get the ariel photos out? jb: I've got a 70Mb file of north London done just that way ;-) salmacis: Less smelly & far more importantly as it is in its last season... Coventry City FC at Highfield Road and the new Jaguar Arena at Foleshill when it was still a gasworks!

By: salmacis

salmacis — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 04:03:57 -0800

I quite like this one from Liverpool, which shows Everton FC top, Stanley Park middle and Liverpool FC bottom. Or this one from Nottingham, which shows Notts County FC top, Nottingham Forest FC middle and Nottinghamshire CCC bottom. Anybody got any other favourite views that don't involve football grounds?

By: salmacis

salmacis — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 04:09:28 -0800

Or for motorsports enthusiasts, Brands Hatch or Silverstone.

By: i_cola

i_cola — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 04:57:17 -0800

Outside of the town this really comes into its own at the 1:25000 scale as you get the detailed Ordnance Survey overlays. Now I want this all on a CD/DVD and make it download-able to a Palm so I can take it out mountainbiking! Three forts in Sussex: Devil's Dyke Cissbury Ring Chanctonbury Ring Other cool places: Warwick (& castle at the bottom) Kenilworth Castle Coventry Cathedral(s) Stonehenge Glastonbury (& Tor) Rollright Stones and from the ground. Avebury stone circle Helvelyn in the Lake District.

By: Orange Goblin

Orange Goblin — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 06:04:22 -0800

I swear you used to be able to zoom in further on multimap, to the point where I could see cars parked in my road...

By: jontyjago

jontyjago — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 07:40:04 -0800

I agree this is very cool. Check out the Burghfield Atomic Weapons Establishment near Reading. It's on the photo, but where is it on the map?

By: nylon

nylon — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 09:37:22 -0800

some of my favourites: Gravelly Hill, aka Spaghetti Junction Bath Circus The, um, 'Depot' near Newbury where they kept all the bombs bound for Iraq.

By: weston

weston — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 09:50:51 -0800

Highly cool.

By: nylon

nylon — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 09:53:28 -0800

Of course, Heathrow is pretty cool from above. And here's a section of abandoned motorway, which is now completely inaccessible, near where I live.

By: Mars Saxman

Mars Saxman — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 10:01:20 -0800

Ahh, I was wondering about that, salmacis - all I see on this site are the aerial photos; no fancy overlays.

By: salmacis

salmacis — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 11:26:22 -0800

Notice the cycle track at the bottom of the Spaghetti Junction? I used to watch the Birmingham Bulls American football team play there in the late 80s.

By: nylon

nylon — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 12:19:12 -0800

Okay, one more, before the thread disappears off the page: Cerne Abbas [SFW]