We've got maps of the Cascades and my home state of Vermont.
We're software guys. We've got a custom website but we're using Shopify for our checkout. We'd love feedback on the maps, the website, or anything at all!
Regardless of the terminology, they look stunning. Definitely appeal to the map geek in me.
It's more descriptive, but potentially at a cost of understanding.Though maybe we should be targeting the demographic who knows what a "relief" map is though... Unsure, just making this up as we go along!
By coincidence, I happened to be researching algorithms for generating 3D meshes from height maps for procedural terrain generation. While it looks like the classical Delaunay trianglization remains the best strategy. I wonder if the high fidelity of next gen sensor data will uncover new techniques. Most PCG techniques employ pretty noisy maps and never quite look "real".
Fast Polygonal Approximation of Terrains And Height Fields (1995)
Very cool stuff. I'll give that paper a read.
There's a weird trick that our brains play on us when the light comes from somewhere other than the north, the ridges and valleys look inverted.
There's been some research on this and the consensus is that sunlight coming from the northwest is best for making the terrain appear "natural".
If you rotate the map 180, you'll see what I mean. The deep gully coming down Shastina looks like a ridge, for example.
While we are printing these on-off, there is a fair bit of work involved in generating the source images: generating hillshade layers, photoshopping the results, etc, so I'm afraid we can't do custom lighting and colors right now.
We're figuring that out right now. We've got a FB ad campaign going and have gotten a few sales, but this line just went live on Wednesday. Our original maps (released at the end of March) were all of Vermont ski mountains and with ski season cut short by the pandemic, we think we missed the boat timing wise.
Our main priorities right now are expanding our geographic reach so that more people can find something that they like. We've got a few more series in the works that we should have up within the month that will greatly expand our offerings.
Then... FB ads, content marketing, target blogs and relevant traditional media? Maybe try and get prints in visitors centers, lodges, hotels, etc?
if so, how is that going and was it worth the work?
Headless, AFAIK, is a higher pricing tier. We're just sorta hacking the standard plan.