RealMaps: playing with map projections, just for fun
RealMaps is a web page that shows the world in more than twenty map projections. I made it just for fun and to learn a bit more on map projections. It is not a research project and not meant to be anything serious, but I liked the result enough to share it.
What you can do with it:
- Pick a projection from the list: cylindrical, pseudocylindrical, azimuthal and conic ones, from Mercator to Gnomonic.
- Drag the map. The place under the circle becomes the centre of the projection, and the map is drawn again around it.
- Move a country. Drag a country to another latitude and see how its size on the map changes.
- Show distortion circles. The circles are all the same size on the globe. On the map they show where and how much the projection stretches.
There is also an xkcd switch. When it is on, each projection gets a short text based on xkcd comic 977, “Map Projections”, the one about what your favourite projection says about you. I added it for fun after I heard it mentioned on a recent episode of the Nerdland podcast when they were discussing maps.
This is fully vibe coded. Grok Build wrote most of it. I used Claude Code to check it and for the finishing touches. Expect rough edges.