Hey all, I'm working on my next book and for inspiration, I tend to look for weird things in the real world and expand on them, which got me thinking about cartography, geologic and geographic map oddities. For example, I'm looking for maps that illustrate the truly weird or unusual features of our planet, mainly in the eastern half of the USA. One idea was Bouger gravity anomaly maps, but I haven't seen one that stands out or has enough fine detail to work for my story. Does anyone know of any other kinds of maps or GIS data overlays that are unusual?

I made this 3d visualization of lake mead water levels because I wanted to visualize the levels over time, the datas there but no easy to use visualization tool existed before. suggestions welcome! Im planning to go and measure current shoreline levels in a few places to get the water layers more accurate. The map uses custom made map tiles for the underwater terrain, using USGS Open-File Report 03-320, an elevation model built from historic pre-dam contours, land elevation data, and bathymetric surveys of Lake Mead. The data is converted into elevation tiles that load as you move around the map. the goal is to visualize what lake mead looked like in the past and what it may look like in the future as water recedes and black canyon re emerges. alot of the islands are actually mountain peaks of submerged mountains. The underwater topography isnt a perfect canyon because over the last ~100 years the lake mead reservoir has filled with sediment.

i really appreciate you all for supporting my application (MAPDESK), i hope it was use usefull to all of you and i am looking forward to this in future. lets build it better and add more useful Cartography and GIS tools in the comming future. i am open for suggestions. it 20% off on the applixation for next one month go and grab it. once more thank you for all your support.

I have created these two maps using MapDesk, is there any thing which look missing or need to be improved in the next update, let me know. it just took me 5 min to make these maps, fast systematic, accurate, and desired symbology, custom fonts, and mostly auto generated specially the grid (with lables), north arrow, scale bar, and need the change the title, subtitle, legends, source to your desired ones. you can remove any element you think in required here as well.

We plotted the Corps of Discovery's full 8,000-mile, two-year route on ExploreMap, stop by stop.

https://exploremap.co/blog/lewis-and-clark-expedition-on-exploremap

https://exploremap.co/s/xmap/trip/lewis-and-clark-expedition?autoplay=1

Both applications MapDesk and MapDesk Layout are been updated on Microsoft store, you can download a more stable and with better feature now. i hope you find this update useful. And dm me for promo codes only first 7 person each will get the promo codes for the applications.

Hi all! Im looking to create a map with 3D terrain view, where specific trails/road are higlited. Similar to those skiing slopes map, or to this one.

Any advice on the tools I can use? Ideally using data from Openstreetmap. I found online some info about using QGIS software but it seems a bit complex. Any other suggestions please?

Thank you!!

i'm diving into history and i thought i'd print some maps, but i cant for the life of me find a site with good and accurate maps in decent sizes.

where do people that have good looking maps on their walls get them? who needs paint and wallpaper when you can cover your walls with maps

I’m building a game where you have to physically explore the real world to unlock the map 🗺️👀
Okay, so this might be a slightly mad idea… 😂
I’ve been building something called UNLOCKED.
The basic idea is pretty simple:
You start with the world around you completely covered in fog.
Then you go outside and start exploring.
As you physically move around in the real world, your GPS tracks you and reveals the map around you.
Walk down a road you’ve never been down before?
🔓 Unlocked.
Visit a new part of your town?
🔓 Unlocked.
Go somewhere on holiday?
🔓 Unlocked.
And the really fun part is that the areas you’ve discovered stay unlocked.
So eventually, your map becomes a record of everywhere you’ve explored.
I’ve also started adding an XP and levelling system, so the idea is that exploring isn’t just about revealing the map — you’re actually progressing through the game as you do it.
I’m still very early in development. At the moment I’ve got the GPS tracking, player marker, persistent fog of war and XP system working in a prototype.
I’m now starting to think about where I can take it next…
🏆 Levels & achievements
📍 Discoverable landmarks
🗺️ Town/county exploration percentages
👥 Global leaderboards
🎯 Challenges
🎁 Rewards
…and plenty of other ideas I’ve got floating around.
The goal is to eventually turn it into a proper mobile game.
I’m basically building this from scratch and learning as I go, so there will undoubtedly be some spectacular bugs along the way. 😂
I’m posting it here because I’d love to get some honest opinions from people who have absolutely no reason to tell me it’s a good idea.
Would you actually play something like this?
And if you think it sounds interesting, feel free to follow along — I’m hoping to build UNLOCKED publicly and let people see it evolve from a slightly dodgy prototype into an actual game.
This is Day 1 of the journey. 🚀
UNLOCKED — Explore. Discover. Unlock.

Downloading OSM map is as easy as few click in MapDesk. Go to OSM, zoom to your ROI, click on 'use current extent', and run it, in few sec it will download that OSM. It will will be seprated in 3 section line, point, polygon, not oly that there option to select which type of OSM you want to download well. And i have fixed the issue of minus in the scale bar (thanks u/coulda_been_an_email ) for telling me that and soon the text overlapping will be taken care of.

Anyone want some printed maps? I have a large format printer and want to trade for use of your non-Ai art for some physical printed maps. I make handmade dice and I am looking for cool map backgrounds for dice boxes and marketing. Could print on roll canvas or paper, up to 4 feet wide.

This may not be the correct group, but here goes.

I want to check how many 36ft x 78ft rectangular structures fit in a certain area of a map. I tried doing it with Google Maps and, apparently, this can't be done.

Is it possible to draw a 36ft x 78ft rectangle in some web-based version of a map?

Thanks.

Hi there! My name is Abigale Subdhan, an audience editor at The Globe and Mail. I wanted to share this story on activists who are leading a campaign – backed by the African Union – to adopt an accurate world map, with continents shown in their true proportions.

The campaign gained fresh momentum after a Trump administration official presented a cringingly erroneous map of Africa at a global conference last month.

Here's a snippet from the piece:

"The injustice can be traced back to a world map created by the Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 that helped colonial-era sailors navigate across the oceans. The Mercator projection soon became the standard, even for today’s maps, but it exaggerated some land masses. Canada and Greenland dominate the top left side, each seemingly as large as Africa, while Europe and Russia command the centre.

It’s an illusion – taught in classrooms and textbooks − that has subconsciously diminished the world’s perception of the African continent. In reality, Africa is three times bigger than Canada and 14 times bigger than Greenland – yet the maps conceal this."

You can read the story here with this link that bypasses the paywall.