from Hacker News

A Cloudless Atlas – How MapBox Aims to Make the World’s ‘Most Beautiful Map’

by holic on 5/15/13, 6:11 AM with 31 comments

  • by templaedhel on 5/15/13, 7:57 AM

    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/...

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

  • by stbullard on 5/15/13, 7:46 AM

    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-...

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

  • by zokier on 5/15/13, 1:06 PM

    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?

  • by s0rce on 5/15/13, 3:04 PM

    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.

  • by zokier on 5/15/13, 12:54 PM

    Couple of sample images of this tech:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/vruba/sets/72157631622037685/wi...

    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...

  • by junto on 5/15/13, 8:56 AM

    The map of the UK is simply stunning.

  • by smcl on 5/15/13, 10:00 AM

    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.

  • by arethuza on 5/15/13, 8:58 AM

    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

  • by xradionut on 5/15/13, 5:24 PM

    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.

  • by zokier on 5/15/13, 12:41 PM

    > 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.