

A Cloudless Atlas – How MapBox Aims to Make the World’s ‘Most Beautiful Map’ - holic
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/05/a-cloudless-atlas/

======
templaedhel
When mapbox first launched tilemill was when I first discovered them. I read
about them on here, and went to check it out.

At the time I didn't really understand the value proposition. It was google
maps without any of the useful API features like geocoding and routing. Plus
they were using openstreetmap which at the time was lagging noticeably behind
google data in my area [1].

Tilemill seemed nice, css to style maps. But google had a nice style wizard
[2] that changed the maps on the clientside, no need to upload a custom
tileset, which is what tilemill seemed to do.

To be honest I generally forgot about them. But then google started charging
more for their maps, and I remembered them as an alternative. I still missed
the flexibly google had for their map styles though.

However in the past week I've come to see them in a whole new light, in part
due to this post, but also due to their vector map post [3] causing me to dig
back in and play around. I now truly believe these guys are one of the coolest
"underdog" startups I've encountered. They've been chugging along and have
created some awesome advancements, or at least competitors in the online map
space. I hope to continue seeing awesome work like this, those map images are
gorgeous.

My only request is that they give a little more detail into how to create
custom styled maps like they show in the vector blog post I linked to. The
process of using their street maps with custom styles is a little hazy to me
right now, although maybe I'm missing something obvious.

[1] It still does, but now only with minute details like service roads on the
local university campus.

[2] [http://gmaps-
samples-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/styledmaps/...](http://gmaps-
samples-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/styledmaps/wizard/index.html)

[3] <http://mapbox.com/blog/vector-tiles/>

~~~
untog
I wrote a small guide to getting started with TileMill:

[http://blogging.alastair.is/i-had-no-idea-how-to-make-
custom...](http://blogging.alastair.is/i-had-no-idea-how-to-make-custom-maps-
so-i-learnt-by-doing-you-should-too/)

But it was written long before these vector improvements. I hope to find the
time to work with them soon, they look awesome.

------
stbullard
See also Mapbox's blog post on this from a month ago (with more images!) here:
[http://mapbox.com/blog/improving-mapbox-satellite-by-
making-...](http://mapbox.com/blog/improving-mapbox-satellite-by-making-
clouds-disappear)

And HN discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5475571>

------
zokier
Any ideas of the detail level/resolution? Based on the "5 billion pixels"
statement, it sounds like it would be something like 150-300m/px, which
doesn't sound very high-res to me. For large scale maps it probably makes
stunning images, but is it suitable for google earth -like zooming and panning
around?

~~~
celoyd
This release is down to zoom level 8, which is roughly 500 m to 1 km/px – what
I think of as _regional_ rather than _local_. You’re seeing mountain ranges
and river valleys, not what you have planted in your garden.

Right now with this project we’re thinking about how to serve people making
small- to medium-scale maps on topics like global environmental issues,
shipping, travel, etc. At higher zoom levels (higher resolutions), our more
conventional satellite and aerial imagery seems to be meeting people’s needs
for now.

------
s0rce
With the information they have and how they processed it seems like they
should have a rough snapshot of each season. It would be remarkable to be able
to click a button and change the landscape from winter-spring-summer-fall.

------
zokier
Couple of sample images of this tech:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/vruba/sets/72157631622037685/wi...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/vruba/sets/72157631622037685/with/8088379965/)

I kinda like this "average" picture, as it shows the snow/ice in a interesting
way

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/vruba/7910717584/in/set-7215763...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/vruba/7910717584/in/set-72157631622037685)

------
junto
The map of the UK is simply stunning.

~~~
arethuza
The fact that Central Scotland is a rift valley is particularly noticeable in
that picture:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Lowlands>

------
smcl
I'm starting to think we're stretching the definition of "beautiful" nowadays.
I see it every other day describing js libraries etc and now this. The
technical stuff behind this is interesting and sort-of impressive but
"beautiful" is going a bit far.

~~~
shubb
I find the maps they make really pretty, but the technical stuff doesn't quite
deserve the hype. This seems like blue marble, which NASA did in 2005 (and
every month since).

That said it should yield a dataset with twice the resolution of Blue Marble,
which is cool. The size of a pixel will be 250m, i.e. a small town will be 2
pixel, as opposed to 1 pixel.

For high resolution imagery, you'd need to pay. There is 0.5m data out there,
for about $5+ a kilometer, and I'd love NASA to dump a whole world data-set of
this. But until then, I think Google and ESRI are safe.

VERY LARGE FILE
[http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/73000/7375...](http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/73000/73751/world.topo.bathy.200407.3x21600x10800.jpg)
NASA's blue marble.

~~~
celoyd
Blue Marble was a big inspiration here, and we’ve had fun comparing notes with
some of the people who made it. Blue Marble is, however, ten years old, and
has a number of (justifiable) limitations. You can get a sense of these if you
zoom in on its depictions of, say, the Niger Delta, or the northern tip of
Greenland.

------
arethuza
That image of the UK reminds me that what I would really like is something
that allows me to dynamically combine different maps and/or images with
something automatically aligning the images/maps appropriately.

e.g. It would be great to blend that UK image, with a geological map with
something like this image of the UK by night:

<http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/article3622556.ece>

~~~
shubb
Look into Quantum GIS. It's an opensource tool that will let you do what you
want (and more). A fair bit more flexible than Google Earth.

Most geographic charts and images are in formats that include a
locations/scale/alignment. Mixing different coordinate systems (global vs uk
local ones) needs the right settings. Good luck!

If you are looking to graphically align non-geostamped images, you should be
able to figure out their corners by comparing them to a map with a known
coordinate system, then use a .world file to specify that location stamp
before importing them to Quantum GIS or whatever you use.

~~~
hnha
if the input data are georeferenced correctly then qgis will happily transform
all layers to a common reference system if you check "on-the-fly" in the
properties.

------
xradionut
I think it's awesome that they are using open data from NASA. I sometimes find
myself skim through various open data sets and make list of possible
projects/products with them.

~~~
SiVal
Have you found any free vector maps that include political boundaries
(countries, states, provinces, counties, cities)?

~~~
jasondavies
<http://www.naturalearthdata.com/>

~~~
SiVal
+1 thanks

------
zokier
> they needed to download two thirds of a terabyte of compressed data. “We’ve
> got 30 to 40 servers pulling down data from NASA,”

40 servers to download 600 gigabytes of data? Something does not sound right
here. If they wanted to avoid overloading the nasa pipes, they could have
asked nasa to fedex that amount on couple of hard-drives or something. At this
day and age bulk transferring a terabyte or two of data should not be a
challenge.

~~~
celoyd
Heh, yes, we seriously considered the Honda Civic full of external drives
option.[0]

Some of our images were from NASA’s hot new GIBS[1] service, which was
extremely fast. However, it’d only backfilled about 2/5 of the data we needed,
so for the rest of it we were using a legacy endpoint that was launched around
2004ish and has some, let’s say, idiosyncratic caching and throttling systems.

Instead of setting up a special channel, we talked to them and figured out how
to shotgun the downloads in a way that wouldn’t kill their cache or require
them to give us special treatment. We thought of this on a Friday and wanted
to have it ready when we came in on Monday, and it worked. Thus the somewhat
blunt methods.

0\. For any young persons in the audience, the reference is to “Never
underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the
highway.” from Tanenbaum’s “Computer Networks”.

1\. [https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about-eosdis/system-
description/g...](https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about-eosdis/system-
description/global-imagery-browse-services-gibs)

