Again 'interactive scale' means nothing here
I disagree. I think the interactive scale does mean something.
It doesn't. We are talking about a World flat earth map. Not a city/state/country flat earth map. So if we are talking about the World then you must be zoomed out. Therefore one scale = World.
Bing map is distorted you cannot get around that fact. Microsoft even state that it's a distorted map, it's the only way to have a globe mapped to a flat image without maybe splitting it up like an orange peel.
By your definition Bing maps is distorted. By my definition it is not.
No, by Microsoft's definition:
"Although the Mercator projection significantly distorts scale and area (particularly near the poles), it has two important properties that outweigh the scale distortion:
1) It’s a conformal projection, which means that it preserves the shape of relatively small objects. This is especially important when showing aerial imagery, because we want to avoid distorting the shape of buildings. Square buildings should appear square, not rectangular.
2) It’s a cylindrical projection, which means that north and south are always straight up and down, and west and east are always straight left and right."
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/bingmaps/articles/bing-maps-tile-systemHow many time do we have to go over this?
Talking about the fact that the Bing map is a projected map from a globe is not a red herring, it's the whole point in this thread.
Again this thread was about the first steps to be taken to make a map of the earth. Hence the title: "How to make a FE map, step one."
Everyone is acting like the title is "How to make a FE map, in which the map takes no inspiration from any sort of global projection, step one."
A true flat earth map by definition has no projection of any shape. No projection. As I and others have said many times, there is no need to
project a flat earth onto a flat map. It's 1 to 1.
The entire point of this and any other discussion about an FE map is that the Flat Earth Community does not have a map to support their theory that the earth is flat. At least one that is
NOT based on a spherical earth. Which is the whole point of trying to make a true flat earth map, one that is not based on a spherical earth. It is the holy grail of the entire flat earth movement.
If it would make you more comfortable, I can ask Jimster to change the title of this thread to "How to make a FE map, in which the map takes no inspiration from any sort of global projection, step one." But I shouldn't have to as you should understand by now.
Ok, so you provided other websites to maps, Well they're all projections from the globe once again.
Do you have any documentation that supports this or are you just making it up?
You probably missed my edit to the previous post:
MapQuest: Yes, uses Mercator Globe Projection
https://developer.mapquest.com/documentation/maps-sdk/android/v2.0.9/javadoc/index.html?com/mapquest/mapping/models/MercatorProjection.htmlTimeandDate.com: Yes, from the distortion there is some sort of projection being used. Look at Greenland, for example. A true Flat Earth map would have zero distortion.
No documentation found.
Suncalc.net: Yes, uses Google’s Mercator Globe Projection
I get an error message that says “This page can’t load Google Maps correctly” but it still works. Its a browser issue.
OpenStreetMap.org: Yes, uses a modified Mercator Globe Projection
"Most of OSM, including the main tiling system, uses a Pseudo-Mercator projection where the Earth is modelized as if it was a perfect a sphere.”
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MercatorBing: Yes, uses Mercator Globe Projection
"To make the map seamless, and to ensure that aerial images from different sources line up properly, we have to use a single projection for the entire world. We chose to use the Mercator projection."
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/bingmaps/articles/bing-maps-tile-systemYou can look this stuff up just as easily as I can. Maybe put a little effort into some research.
Compare the landmass sizes to google earth to see the distortion. Once again, this is why this thread exists.
Again we disagree. If the map has an interactive scale which changes depending on where you look and how far in you are zoomed I don't consider that distorted.
Just because you disagree doesn't make you right. Read Microsoft's description of the distortion in Bing maps above. And again, we're not talking about scaling. We're talking about a world map which means you use one scale, the zoomed out one. Otherwise, you can't see the whole world.
Which I'll wager that globe maps like google maps aren't wrong
Even Google maps has an interactive scale which changes depending on where you look and how far in you are zoomed. By your logic it's distorted.
See above.
You can provide all the projected maps you want... I find it strange that you've only pointed to projected maps though and not maps that not using a projection.
I only ever saw any sort of documentation that Bing maps was a Mercator projection.
This documentation says that the Mercator projection is not based on a globe/sphere/oblate spheroid but rather based on a collection of flat maps:
https://wiki.tfes.org/World_Geodetic_System_1984
No where in the wiki or the supporting documentation does it say the Mercator projection is not based on a globe/sphere/oblate spheroid but rather based on a collection of flat maps. Tom's arguments are around State Plane maps which if you actually read the supporting documentation are great for a State view but quickly lose accuracy the bigger the area. According to Tom's logic the FE community could just paste together all the State plane maps and boom, there's your flat earth map of America. However, in aggregate, it would be a wildly inaccurate map of America.
And actually, the wiki article and supporting documentation quite nicely points out how maps
are based on a spherical earth.