Geospatial engineering · Brussels
Every flat map lies about size. Pick one and watch the number change.
Orthographic
Not a compromise — a globe, seen from infinitely far away. Nothing here is inflated, but nothing near the rim is full size either: the ground is foreshortened by the cosine of its angle from the centre, and half the planet is always behind it.
Projection
Layers
drag to rotate
The useful bit
Where are you, exactly?
The same point written eight different ways, and what the world’s favourite projection is doing to it. All of it is computed in this tab. Your position never leaves your device.
Showing Hiroshima until you say otherwise.
Which ground are you standing on?
A latitude and longitude is measured against a model of the Earth’s shape. Change the model and the same stone gets a different address. Six historical models are tried below, drawn at a scale where a few hundred metres is visible — and each one answers only where it is published as valid, which for most of the world is nowhere.