South up is fine. This article lost me when they suggested east up, west up, or "any compass bearing". That's not how planets work.
Anyways, VR/AR globes will solve these problems pretty quickly.
Anyways, VR/AR globes will solve these problems pretty quickly.
A transverse map projection [1] doesn't make much sense as a default. The linked image shows the lines of longitude severely distorted, and a compass rose would not make sense on this map. There is a real, physical reason why north and south should be at opposing edges of the map.
But it's perfectly reasonable to rotate a map by 90 or 270 degrees - nothing about the "way planets work" implies that you need to orient the map in this direction when raising it from a horizontal plane to a vertical wall.
If anything, the reason would be that the circumference of the equator is twice the distance between the poles, and human eyes are better suited for panning in the horizontal.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transverse_Mercator_projection...
Separate note - while i get that north-up is just a convention and a mental construct, the south-up map really threw me off. As i was staring into the map, I felt the urge to turn my monitor around and had the same visceral need to set things right as i would upside down on a roller-coaster. This caught me completely by surprise because i was expecting to just make a mental note that this was a new convention i could get used to. Instead i "felt" uncomfortable - did this happen to anyone else?