I’m trying to overlay Google Earth with a pair old maps.
The latest Google Earth has a very simple overlay tool. You just select an image and drag/stretch it over the correct area. The hard part is making sure the image is of the correct projection, Plate Carrée, otherwise stuff gets squished together at the poles.
The maps I’ve started with have the equator as a circle on the outside of and the pole is a single point in the middle. This means I cannot just place them as is, if you overlay an image on to a pole it shrinks to nothing. The maps I have are in a Stereographic Projection so I wrote a simple application to convert these to the correct projection. The resulting image looked like this.
The writing in both maps is north-up and parallel to the lines of latitude. This means that when wrapped around a sphere it should make a nice north up globe.
You can download the result here. (You must have Google Earth 4.2 or above)
This is my first attempt. There are a couple of improvements I intend to make.
- Even though the maps are small and zooming will be of little benefit, the resolution could be better.
- The lines of latitude on my the original maps do not line up with those provided by Google earth.
- The is a problem with distortion around the seems that is not on the image so they are caused by Google earth.
I have to say that the Tadmap project looks really interesting....