Borderless map

desan

Hi all

Would it be possible to implement a borderless map, i.e. one can move through the north/south pole? That would be a great addition!

Cheers

idefix37

@desan
Hi, that was possible with the 3D option. But this possibility to have views over the poles is no longer available, unfortunately.

https://community.windy.com/topic/7004/3d-option-disappeared

desan

ah that's a shame! I was not aware that there was a 3D view at all, otherwise I would have used it..

Anyway I think it shouldn't be a big thing to implement an endless map. It would be interesting to see the pressure maps of the northpole as that's one possibility to predict cold weather in the northern hemisphere and spot a possible polar vortex disruption.

TZ

@desan Hi, it is not possible in current map projection. It is Mercator projection which maps the Sphere to cylinder and both poles are mapped to infinity. Mathematical function used in projection computation is tangent which goes very quickly to infinity when the coordinate is close to 90 degrees, so the latitude is limited approximately to range [-85, 85]. This is common projection used in most web services like Google maps, Bing maps, etc. and also hardcoded in Leaflet library which is used in Windy.
We can not focus on it right now, but like you: We hope 3D come back someday.

idefix37

@tz
Would a stereographic polar projection (plane tangent to the pole) be easier to implement ? It could be an alternative to the 3D mapping and could fill the gap due to the Mercator projection in the polar regions.
Of course it’s a less smart solution than 3D, and it needs 2 views, one for North Pole and one for South Pole.

TZ

@idefix37 maybe yes, but 3d is more general. Anyway thank you for suggestion!

desan

@tz Thank you for your response. Ok I understand, so let's hope that 3D maps are coming back eventually (I like the new google maps 3D feature)

@idefix37 Thanks for the suggestion! thats also a good idea

rekel

I liked the 3D also a lot, especially in these days of intewrets for arctic and anatctic weather influences.

Scrolling of the Mercator projection now goes horizontally, or east-west vv

Would it be possible, at least until we get 3D back to make possible to scroll north-south vv to be able to put the poles in the middle of the Mercator projection ?

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardus_Mercator)

idefix37

@rekel
You probably refer to the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) which is a cylindrical tangent projection but with the axis of the cylinder perpendicular to the North-South axis?
This projection has many disadvantages:
https://gisgeography.com/utm-universal-transverse-mercator-projection/