Texture Mapping to the Max :)

Yours truly loves maps, the older the better but ... they are all inaccurate save for the AuthaGraph World Map

You probably don’t realize it, but virtually every world map you’ve ever seen is wrong. And while the new AuthaGraph World Map may look strange, it is in fact the most accurate map you’ve ever seen.

The world maps we’re all used to operate off of the Mercator projection, a cartographic technique developed by Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. This imperfect technique gave us a map that was “right side up,” orderly, and useful for ship navigation — but also one that distorted both the size of many landmasses and the distances between them.

To correct these distortions, Tokyo-based architect and artist Hajime Narukawa created the AuthaGraph map over the course of several years using a complex process that essentially amounts to taking the globe (more accurate than any Mercator map) and flattening it out:

How he did it, texture mapping to the max.

It gets better.

But a new map called AuthaGraph, created by Tokyo-based artist and architect Hajime Narukawa, just won Japan's distinguished Good Design Award for accurately representing the relative sizes of landmasses and bodies of water on Earth. The map is so proportionally accurate that you can fold it up into a three-dimensional globe.

Thanks Chuck, I needed that. :)