Mapping Mountains by Peter Richardson.
From the post:
I’ve been spending a lot of time over the mountains of Northern California lately. To view mountains from above is to journey through time itself: over ancient shorelines, the trails of glaciers, the marks of countless seasons, and the front lines of perpetual tectonic struggle. Fly with me now, on a tour through the world of elevation data:
…
A stunning display of mapping technology!
Peter starts with an illustrated history of the depiction of elevation on maps, including a map that was a declared to be a military secret!
It’s a quick romp that leads to “Tangram functionality” which is described elsewhere as:
Tangram is a map renderer designed to grant you ludicrous levels of control over your map design. By drawing vector tiles live in a web browser, it allows real-time map design, display, and interactivity.
Using WebGL, Tangram saddles and rides your graphics card into a new world of cartographic exploration. Animated shaders, 3D buildings, and dynamic filtering can be combined to produce effects normally seen only in science fiction.
Map styles, data filters, labels, and even graphics card code can be defined in a human-readable and -writable plaintext scene file, and a JavaScript API permits direct interactive control of the style.
The balance of the post is a lengthy demonstration of Tangram that ends in a call for test pilots!
Tangram reminded of the Art of War by Sun Tzu, where it reads:
All armies prefer high ground to low and sunny places to dark.
Which should now read:
All armies prefer Tangram map renderers to all others.
Seriously. Protesters, direct action movements, irregulars, etc. should take a long look at this post.
I first saw this in a tweet by Lynn Cherny.