Flexify (http://www.flamingpear.com/flexify-2.html) is an incredible decades-old Photoshop plugin for making these. I made a mobile for a grade school math project using Flexify and NASA's equirectangular planetary maps, turning Mercury into a tetrahedron, Venus a pentahedron, etc.
Neat! There's a notable omission though--none of the earth globes look like earth does from space, with true color* AND clouds. A while ago I got really into making paper globes because I wanted one like that and I couldn't find one I liked. I asked Claude to write a script to generate a net out of this: https://web.archive.org/web/20250316112538/https://visibleea... Instead of an isocahedron, I used gores like a real globe. This approximates a sphere using intersecting cylindrical surfaces (not sure what the term for that solid is!) I made a bunch but usually they came out pretty lumpy, here's the best one: https://imgur.com/a/eikGrTW
*Edit: I also couldn't find a good point of reference for what "true color Earth" even looks like. Different photos/satellites seem to have notably different color calibration, just google "blue marble" and you'll see. And this isn't even getting into the weeds about atmospheric effects, which appear strongest near the limb... obviously there's no way to replicate that on a globe!
Neat. For folks who are more comfortable with using the terminal than paying for things, I have used this python libraries to make isospheres from 360 photographs:
https://github.com/Teque5/pydymax
That sounds really cool, can you expand a bit on the workflow you used: what format were the 360 pictures in and how did you convert that into data that this Python library uses ?
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I haven't looked at the pointed site yet but will do once I get some time on my hands. Maps end up nerd-sniping me.
The offset also forces the gore to be bent in two directions, so it’s also bit tricky, and makes the gore stiffer then it needs to be, dampening the paper there certainly helps.
Too late to edit: As a sibling comment says, in the top of the site they offer an option to make a version with only the borders. I don't see an option to combine satellite photos and borders anyway.
I do find it interesting that while modern map apps do a great job of replacing road atlases, and we can get satellite and photogrammetry overlays that give us immense insight into how maps relate to the context on the ground, and we do have pretty good topographic mapping apps (though sadly not built in to the big map apps like Google or Apple), but one kind of map that we used to get in paper atlases but can’t explore so easily online are political maps. Google Maps is also not great as a physical map in that it is bad at labelling and naming geographic features - Apple Maps does a better job at this. But neither offers a good way to hide all the roads and just look at borders.
Another thing I miss in common digital maps is the use of typeface sizes and weight to approximate city populations. There are many other ones, like toll road, multi-lane, two lane, paved, unpaved, under construction/washed out, as well as better communication of biome characteristics like forest, marsh, swamp, desert, farmland, lava flow, (plus the usual parks, preserves, wilderness, etc.)
Paper maps communicated a lot of different information, not only things about roadways. It's like roadmaps are the only maps the common online digital maps cared to build digitally.
The site doesn't give you printouts you can fold into a globe, but it is very informative. You highlight countries, drag them around, and their size adjusts to whatever degree of distortion you'd get for any land mass at the given longitude. So you can, say, highlight Greenland and drag it on top of Brazil and see how they compare. You can highlight and drag countries, US states, Canadian provinces, and Australian states. Hovering over an entity shows you area and population.
Are you sure? Greenland looks quite small and in https://foldingglobes.com/ there is an option to print the borders with parallels and meridians and they are split and curved.
also, what you write doesn't make much sense. the problem is with the relative sizes, with the non-linear distortion. regardless of which zero point you pick.
Have you looked at https://foldingglobes.com/how-it-works It compares a globe and a rotating version of the icosahedrum. Also read the description there, the distortion is small.
* from West to East covers 69°, i.e. 1/5.2 of 360°. In the maps of foldingglobes the width of Africa is close to 1/5 of the map. The same applies to the other maps, I don't see too much disagreement on the width.
* From South to North, coves 72°, i.e. 1/2.5 of 180°. In the maps of foldingglobes the width of Africa is close to 1/4 of the map. The same applies to the other maps, I don't see too much disagreement on the width.
Here I pasted a 4x2 grid of Africas over the map https://imgur.com/a/huMJgbG
I hope it's clear there is room for one more copy on the side (like half on one side and half on the other) and half a copy at the bottom, so I consider it a 5x2.5 grid. So the size on the map is pretty close to the globe.
>> Africa is fine in Mercator
> here's a reality check:
I don't understand what you mean. Africa is near the Equator and is fine in the Mercator projection. A circle is mapped to almost a circle. The problem is that Europe and North America have a bigger scale. (I'd try to print the maps and make a collage later.)
An interesting comparison in the map you linked is Norway, that is very North and has a huge scale difference in the Mercator projection.
In the map you linked, if you move slowly Norway from the center of the Sahara to the North, when it reach the cost it goes approximately form the southest part of the gulf in Libya (near Rā's Lānūf) to the frontier between Morocco and Algleia (near Nador).
Using a plastic rule on the screen on the screen on my computer in whatever resolution I have now in Google Maps (Mercator), I get 5.5cm from Rā's Lānūf to Nador. But when I measure Norway with the same method I get 9.5cm form Sandnes to Berlevåg. That shows that the scale of Norway is like x2 the scale of the north cost of Africa, but I think we both strongly agree in that Mercator use different escales.
If I repeat the same measurement in the map in foldingglobes, I get 3cm for Norway. The cost of North Africa is hard to measure because it is split, but it looks like 4cm. Can I claim a 1 to 1 scale? I think the north cost of Africa that I'm measuring is slightly bigger in the map. I guess the cost is closer to the edges and then they have a slightly bigger escale.
Anyway, the conclusion is that the huge x2 difference of escale disappears.
For completeness:
If I use the distance measurement in Google Maps I get 1700km for Norway and 2000 for the part of the north cost of Africa. So close enough for me, not a huge x2 mistake in the comparison.
If I use a plastic ruler in the map you pasted I get I get 6cm for Norway and 6cm for the part of the north cost of Africa.
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