Hello and welcome to A Very Spatial Podcast, episode 756, March 2nd, 2025. Hello and welcome to A Very Spatial Podcast. I am Jesse. I'm Sue. I'm Barb. And this is Frank. And this week we're going to talk about things because I don't know, Gulf of Mexico. First up in the news, Esri has put out various things in the announcement form, including updates to ArcGIS Online. If you, of course, are an education user, once again, you're thinking to yourself, but why? Why in the middle of the semester?
Why? And here's the equally annoying thing. The ArcGIS Online updates February, right? Normally it's March. Could you just Stick with it. If you can guess when it's going to be, you'll be like, all right, we're good till, but no, no, on the other side, most of the things don't go away. They get added. So less of an issue than compared to what it used to be whenever it was more of a total overhaul each time.
Yes, the more subtle things aren't also as big a deal when you're trying to use educational tools and none of the, the screenshots or instructions match. That's always fun, but it seems to be less of an issue now. But there's some interesting updates. I like some of the updates to the animated symbols that we're looking at right now. Improved pop ups for multi dimensional imagery layers. I don't know, there's a lot of different things.
You know, the web editor is, I think, out of beta now, so that is getting a little bit more powerful. Whenever you look at different analyses, there's a few new analyses that are available. Model Builder still is there now and in beta. What was the one I wanted to highlight? What was it? Oh, I won't remember. It was something in one of the third party apps. They've added to the content store the new app for commercial satellite imagery. You know, they keep on adding a lot more imagery to things.
So that way you don't have to go through the Store whose name I can't remember But this is kind of more of a one off type of purchase if you want to do that as opposed to doing subscriptions Which the old store whose name I forget Is focused on those type of things. So if you want extensions and subscriptions go to the whatever it's called if you want specific data sets and and short term Access to things that's content store and I go on a little rant. Sure. All right.
So this is something I had a rant earlier to Barbara when we were walking across campus this last week. And this online update feeds into it for lack of a better term or lack of what it does here is that. Well, everyone's excited. I don't think there's a lot of mention about AI in there. I sort of scanned through it. I didn't see it, but still everyone's talking about geo AI. And I did notice that they've added some, some cool layers as they always do to living Atlas. Some really, you know.
It's got the latest American community surveys layers in there and the Global Wind Atlas and the 2023 NAPE imagery. There's lots of cool stuff in there. This is my frustration with the Living Atlas. I can never find anything in it, like, ever. Like, if you go to look at things in the, what's, if you find on the website, this is what's in the Living Atlas. You're like, oh, that's amazing. And then I actually. Go into it and in the search thing in ArcGIS online, I type something.
I get a lot of results that typically are you know, a map somebody made or something like that that they published as public that you could, you know, go look at and stuff like that, which is cool, but I don't really understand why AI isn't more. Integrated into the living at plus search. It's just baffles me. I should be able to say, ask complicated questions in that search bar because I can do that in chat GPT and it should get back to me. Look, these are the things we think that apply.
That's my little pet peeve rant. I don't know. I mean, I think I just wish they would do simple searches better. It's an endless frustration. Well, yeah, but I mean, you're playing with AI already. Yeah. Well, that's, but they're taking a very slow approach to it. And I don't necessarily disagree with, with that. They are pushing the term AI, but a lot of that AI is the things that have been there already. It's about machine learning. It's about deep learning.
It's about those access to imagery and those types of things. It's. They're starting to put more of the generative AI in there, but a lot of the AI they're still pushing in the geo AI at Esri is, is a lot of the AI we've been doing for, you know, years, if not decades. Well, yeah, I have no problem with that AI going slow on that. I'm just saying, just trying to find stuff and living Atlas is way harder than it needs to be. And we have better tools to make it less.
And the way this came up is because there's some cool things they're doing with AI that it's in the living Atlas now having to do with debris for flooding, and then also something to do with wild fire smoke. And, you know, just asking, has any, you know. Anyone we know use this and how does, you know, how is it doing? And that got into, well, where do you even find it? Through the search, but those are some cool things going on. I did preferences by saying it was a rant.
It's no, no, again, grants are fine. That is, that is why we still make the podcast for the five people who listen. So, you know, they, they listen to the rants and are like shaking their head or agreeing or one of the two we don't have continuing with the arc thread. Map Viewer Classic is going to be deprecated. If you are adding ArcGIS Online to your organization now, you don't have access to it.
If you had an organization already that, of course, had Map Viewer Classic, you will be able to access Map Viewer Classic until Q1 of 2026. So you have about a year before you lose that. So it's either end of this year or early next year, depending on where their quarters fall. I've never really Payed attention to if they're in October or January company. So there you go. Other than having to redo a bunch of work. Does anyone care? I don't even know if you have to redo a bunch of work.
Yeah, there were some things that wouldn't work that are like if you had older maps that had certain things going on in them. You'd have to open them in classic. And so if you're an organization that has stuff going back. A few years. I've had it happen once or twice, but. I mean, yes, for anybody new or just coming in, it's not a huge deal, but as always with legacy stuff that you have that you're still using. That's the main, it's just, I like the new one so much better than classic.
I totally get, this was actually deprecated almost a year ago, quarter 2, 2023. It's just, this is by the way, we say deprecated and we all know because Esri's the, Esri users are the worst that I've ever experienced for Almost any software exception of maybe windows of I'm gonna ride or die. It's the very end of the earth before I get off of this, this tool set. And it's amazing to me how much people.
Cling to that, particularly when you've got situations where it's clearly superior in this particular case, it's clearly superior. Just move. It's better. You know, my rant for the day, which isn't going to be a long rant by any means, is the people who are going to pay for the windows 10 continuing of life update thing that is going to be an option after october. And they're still sticking with 10. 8. 2. And that's just like, why? Why? Why? I I do it.
I do have a laptop sitting over there that is incapable of upgrading and I just don't want to spend the money To replace it because it does what it's supposed to do just fine But are you gonna pay for the i'm not gonna pay for because I really don't care It's I don't use that laptop that much and if someone hacks it, yeah, whatever. I don't care It doesn't really matter.
I just format c colon if I have to it's about continuity and as much about workflow and stuff as it is about the tools like there's plenty of people that probably Want to upgrade to new tools, but there's they're stuck in a workflow. I, my only, my only point to that to sort of harmonize the two is that I understand the workflow argument, but it's not like to turn it off the next week. They go. It's over usually have like a year. I mean, you know, you have had years. Yeah. You've got time.
Figure it out, man. I mean, it's not. No, I get that too. It's comfort. It's comfort that you have mastered. With that, we are going to say that with the move to ArcGIS Enterprise 11. 5 I'm sorry, not with 11. 5, but after 11. 5, so you get to keep it through 11. 5, but at 12, they are dropping multiple things. So MapViewer Classic, ArcGIS Configurable Apps, WebAppBuilder, these are the things that are going away in 12. So be prepared, 11. 5, which is coming.
In the summer will be kind of the last of that, but that is a long term support release. There's some interesting things in here. That most of that's like, yeah, who cares? It's just again, you know, it's coming plan for it. I just wanted to say, but the one I do think that people need to pay attention to is the tile cash data store is evolving and that is almost always universally a epic.
Crap ton, if you pardon my French of data for most organizations, and you should really that one more than anything else. If you just want to go, I'm gonna blow it off to the last minute. It's not the end of the world, but that one is going to take time to migrate. So there is a migration tool. There is a migration path. I think it was a tool, but there's certainly a migration path that they've got for that.
But you need to start thinking about that as you moved 11. 5 that 12 is going to change that tile store significantly. And I wanted to counter some of the rants with something small, but that I'm highly appreciative of is the use of the timeline infographics. They've started putting in because it really does help explain to people that you're working with here is the reality of what's happening and how we can fit this into, you know, what we have to do day by day.
So that's something that has been. Showing up more and more with these types of reports, and I appreciate that they're doing it that way. Okay. Well, in more new software news or software update news sketch up 2025 is coming out. I don't know if it's available yet, but it's coming out and I think there's. There's a number of new things going on here.
So I'm a longtime Sketchup user, but I think I'm still running on 2023 But for this release, I think the the focus on new visualization, especially in terms of photorealistic Materials like textures and stuff is pretty cool And I think I will actually be looking to upgrade.
I mean, there's some other interesting things coming along but for me that's probably the big one because that has been a struggle and And so when you say photo realistic materials, and there's other other programs that have done better with that earlier, and increasingly that's something people people want to see. So, I'm kind of excited to check that out for sure.
And they're increasing their interoperability with, I don't know if it's Revit or Revit, but the architecture software, which is good, especially for some of the photo realism, but also increasing perceived depth and realism. Finally in the news, with another piece of software, Windows is finally killing off its API for location history in Windows 11. This was a Cortana extension, and so since Cortana's been gone for a while, it's kind of curious that they've left this in.
And so They're finally deprecating that. And of course we've seen Google go through and do this recently. Apple has been storing theirs locally as opposed to online anyway. And so I think it's just kind of a realization that if you take it away from the online services and if it's not necessary, even the hardware services that. People can't ask you for that data. So I think, you know, we continue to see that kind of movement.
But yeah, this is one of those weird one that's just kind of there, but not maybe being used a lot. They're also, and by the way, I am one of the maybe six people. Who actually liked Cortana. I like the Cortana. I mean, you can change the voice, but I like the Cortana voice and I actually did use it and I had as the people who may remember passing the pot. I had a windows phone and I actually use Cortana and that and I, I was sad to see it go, but that's not the here nor there.
But the other thing is I guess word pads out now as well. And I guess who, who used that, but I did on occasion actually use word pad. I can't say that I ever. Yeah. Voluntarily use wordpad, but you know, there was like specifics. I mean, I use notepad a fair bit, but there were a couple of situations where I actually did use it.
So it's like, oh, hey, wordpad and it's gone and that's it for the news and in a web corner, the Norman B. Leventhal map and education center at the Boston public library is hosting. It's in our world. David J. Weaver GIS research fellow in which you the. The fellowship will allow any recipients to explore their archive of early maps, and also their physical collection on the history of computer cartography.
So, if you are someone that works with GIS history, cartography, urban planning, remote sensing, or anything where you've been wanting to do something on the history of GIS, then this might be the fellowship for you. It's pretty cool that we're at the point where we're doing things about our history. Yeah, I think there should be more of it. I was trying to explain the other day to to my digital cartography class actually about the way symbols used to look and things like that.
And just even though it doesn't seem like it's a huge difference, I showed them old maps, but I'm like, yeah, but it kind of is in the digital world. Well, I mean, we're, we're approaching 70 years from the initial Roger Tomlinson. Canadian map. Let's see. So this week, Dr. Bergeron suggested the topic of cartography and one that we've not talked about in a while because she stopped at something cartography.
The one that we haven't talked about in a while, kind of actually touches a little bit with a sketch up conversation and that is As we're moving more and more from traditional flat 2D maps back into 2. 5D, 3D representations and the question of, well, two questions, one, you know, this question of photorealism, Uncanny Valley versus using more traditional cartoonish or simplified representations and let's start with that one. I'll toss the other one in later if it fits. So lots about that.
Well, I think so. Actually, lots of thoughts because a number of years ago, Bart, I can't remember how long ago we did. We did an article on 3D visualization for municipal kind of information, but looking at using 3D or two and a half D but just simple colors. So we looked at areas around Morgantown and it's sort of neighbor Star City and trying to show, for example, the days you collect your trash and land.
I think it was zoning was the other one, but just using simple building footprint extrusion. So making it two and a half D. So almost 3D looking. But just using those colors, right? So looking at the situations where it doesn't need to be photorealistic to kind of still give a more enhanced view of something. And so, and that goes back a number of years, but the photorealism as tools.
Have improved so we talked not too long ago on the podcast however many months it's been about the the google photorealistic tiles photo photorealistic 3d tiles Some other tool sets they're coming.
Online But when people see those they think oh the photorealism is the thing that I want but when you have enhanced information, right, which is the the mission of cartography is to give us a visualization that is, that is getting information knowledge out to somebody that hopefully will, will get it right is that's the question, right? Does the photorealism enhance that or mask it a little and make it harder for the information to stand out that you're then adding to it?
So. I'm pretty strongly on team abstraction, abstraction. Sorry, try English again. I find photo realism to be, I think it gets as really hard as the uncanny valley because people tend to start getting hyper focused on the accuracy of what they're seeing based upon their personal knowledge. Oh, that store is not open anymore. Or that that's weird that they have.
Potatoes on sale for that much money or, you know, whatever little piece of information that is completely irrelevant to what you're actually trying to get them to show, they get really hyper focused on it and it gets I know that's an unusual use of the term uncanny valley, but I think what it does is it very much distracts them from focusing on what you're trying to communicate and to that extent, I think that it's, yeah.
Almost always better to start from abstraction and work your way towards realism as opposed to start with realism and work your way towards abstraction in almost every cartographic situation. I have, I've struggled to find any that I thought, well, I should start with photo realism and work our way back except for the clear cut exemption of aerial imagery. Aerial imagery is the 1 place where I think that it does sometimes enhance and help things when augmented with abstraction take, for example.
Property lines. If I show you a bunch of property lines with absolutely no imagery behind it, most people go, I don't know, it's a bunch of usually yellow lines on a map. Who cares? But if you put the imagery there, you go, Oh, I see. That's where my house is. And that's where my neighbor's house is. And I understand that's where the line is and that sort of thing. That's the one area that I find that is critical to have. Realism and even then you trip into that.
Well, I didn't build that garage, you know that garage doesn't exist anymore I was tore down a a year ago or whatever. That's always a bit of a pain.
So so kind of what what you're saying is that Among other things is that the snapshotting right that we always do in data capture with cartography becomes a hindrance when you're talking like the closer you get to photo realism, right because There's maybe a dynamism like a dynamic nature that people are inferring that's not there in the sense that oh, it should be always up to date if it looks that real, right? So that's kind of what you're saying.
I think that's one dimension to what I'm saying. I think that there's also even if it's even I'll go and take the picture right now and then come in and go, here's your map. I still think people get a little bit. Too much in the weeds on the, the realism and get a little lost focusing on that. I didn't really realize that was what that color yellow or whatever dumb thing that doesn't really matter.
And it detracts from what you're trying to do is to show them an evacuation route or show them, these are the water lines or, you know, whatever it is you may be trying to depict in your actual map that is, is I find it almost. Not universally that as I said, there's one clear example where that's not true, but it's very often if not the majority of the overwhelming majority of the time, a distraction rather than help. No, I thought Barb had something to say before, but she didn't.
Okay. So as we look at this, then you know, we, we are talking about abstraction and simplification. So these are our, Okay. Are primitives, but the primitives don't have to be completely primitive. It can be a representation of, say, a fire hydrant. It doesn't have to be a little circle or a little box.
It just, we don't want it to be photorealistic because like Frank is saying, you know, if you put in quote unquote photorealistic fire hydrants and you're in an area that has red fire hydrants with white, connection points. I just forgot what they're called. Accents. Yeah, accents. That's good. Versus the yellow and green that you might see somewhere else. You're going to have somebody who's, you know, there's a cognitive dissonance there.
So whenever we look at these, it doesn't have to be a completely Simplified, completely simplified idea of representation, but just something that's not meant to be. This is what you would see here. So, yeah, I think that's what we're kind of getting to. I don't know what I'm saying anymore and when we can. Yeah, I was thinking back to that project.
I think that all the advances we've had have made it so that you can do abstraction in a very elegant and simplified way that just looks and gives you a feel that's so much different than it was back then. So, even though you would think you wanted. Something simplified means it's, it's older. It's not as you know, techie or understood.
Actually, when you're looking, I think about all the advances in the, like, what lighting looks like or represented as that you see people doing now in a lot of cartography, whether it's lights at night in a city or, you know, lights on lighthouses or lights on, on ships at sea. It's, it's just amazing what you can do. And it's not photorealistic, but it gives you that, that feeling. So you understand it.
I think this gets at, this is really great for me because I, what I have to do tomorrow is prepare my lesson on on for, for my digital technology course, it's on symbology and visual hierarchy. So some of the thoughts that are kicking around in my head, my own credit, I need to write this down. So I make sure I cover it in the lecture, but the, I think symbology becomes critical in this particular context, because I think that. Legends get klugy after a certain point.
Like if you have 10 things in a legend box, I just, to pick a number, I think people go, okay, I can follow that. When you have like 37, they're, that's just too many things. I'm just not gonna look that up. It's just not worth my energy. So a lot of this is, you know, the sim, the symbolism of showing.
The example that Jesse gave a fire hydrant, you know, something that looks very fire hydrant, E, even though it may not, in fact, be a true representation of fire hydrants within the landscape as we would experience them can be very powerful. It's an abstraction, right? But it also has to be a pseudo realistic abstraction at some level. And this is kind of where.
I think maps interact with, this is an older term, but skeuomorphism that was used in, in user interface design, the question of, should something look like the thing that it is, or should it be sort of a very vague abstraction or almost artistic representation of what it is? The very classic examples you can think of skeuomorphic icons are the little. You know, save icon that's on most applications and the little printer icon is on most applications.
The thing that's interesting about maps is we have to walk that line. I don't think we have the latitude as cartographers to completely get rid of skeuomorphism. Just we're just not going to deal with that because it would end up having to train everyone with a new set of symbology that they're just. Don't have, I don't think they have the buy in to bother to learn it.
And I think that if we start making new sorts of symbology that people aren't going to gravitate towards, then it's going to be a challenge for them to go. I'm going to go look up the, in the index of legend of what this particular shade of red dot means versus this other particular shade of fuzzy red dot. It's just not viable. So we do actually have to walk that. Pseudo realistic line, quite a bit. Well, I think something that's interesting.
So I mean I work in a very niche area, right which is Immersive environments, but as i've gotten to think about the conversation here you know, we're talking about Not just the the map itself, right?
But the the symbology which is the key Key way that information is conveyed like this is what the map is showing you Is that we traditionally have done that in a legend right a little key that's on the map and as we've transitioned to more interactive maps and, you know, kind of the web interface and dynamic we've had to figure out, well, you know, that's not working the same way. So we have different solutions for how we do that.
So the symbology, the legend becomes part of kind of the left hand side.
If you're looking at, you know, standard maps or it's just you figure it out kind of thing, but in the 3D immersive environment I've started to, and others, I've started to explore the fact that your legend isn't so much a listing as it were, but simply an encounter and you get Some piece of information that says this is what this is and you kind of file it away or you can go and look at it another screen and it's kind of an interesting difference, right?
It's not a it's not a list that you consult, but it's an encounter. And then you might have a HUD. So that's a heads up display in your in your user interface. That might tell you what that is or add to that and so I think that that's an interesting complication because if you're going to work towards photo realism and sometimes you're working on projects where the people want that and you know, you say, hey, this might be a way to work on this, but it is to look at the sort of grammar, right?
The visual grammar that helps us understand maps. Has to evolve when you're, you know, using that kind of environment. And I think, first the term map here is somewhat problematic because we're talking about landscapes, we're talking about environments. And whether we want to call it environmental landscape or just a computer lens or sorry a 3D environment that's kind of up to each person as they're talking about it.
But calling it a map isn't wrong because it is cartography, but it is somewhat problematic because it pushes us into these kind of traditional ideas of Cartographic symbolism and legends and the 7 pieces of flair that you need to have on every map and those type of things. And I think jumping back to what both of you were talking about with the legend. Kind of building on what Sue was saying, you know, there is no legend in these 3D environments a lot of times.
And, you know, it's not like we have a map series like the USGS quadrangles where we have a whole separate document that is. The legend for those maps, but instead it's the experience, right? It's back to that landscape and environment idea that you're experiencing things. And that is how you know what they are not because you've been shown.
So it has to be like Frank was saying, it has to be at least representative of what the thing is, whether it's through skew morphism or photo realism to have the user be able to understand what they're interacting with and maybe how they might need to interact with it. 3D cartography is always a bit of a nightmare because we haven't built that language yet. I mean, if you show me a 2D map and there's a star on it and with a place name, I'm going to guess that's probably a capital.
I'm just going to guess that's probably true. If you show me a map with a black circle with a red dot in the middle, I'm also going to guess that's a capital, especially if there's other black circles with place names on them. I can kind of infer that because we've taught through. The development of the symbology and a language for that symbology. Some things make certain sense. If I see a blue line, that's probably going to be water.
Good. If it's supposed to represent a landscape, that's a good guess that I can do off the, off the off the jump. And you can insert the joke from arrested development of where clearly all this blue part is land. If you haven't seen the episode, watch the start episode, you'll see it. It's a funny cartography joke. Those things are, are, have been built through literal centuries of developing a language and, and educating that as we move forward.
I mean, there's a skill of map reading and we tell people how to read maps, how you communicate scale, for example, is one of two things is I'm going to give you a ratio of some sort, one to 24, 000, and you know what that means because you've been taught what that means. Or I'm going to stick a bar at the bottom that says one of those is.
One of these, whether it be kilometers or miles or whatever the heck it may be I've got that to say, okay, I understand how to understand the scale of this map when we work in the 3d realm. It's just all that's gone. All we have really is realism because, oh, I know that. What a tape I know that's a table because it looks like a table and I've experienced a table. So that's a table I mean a physical not a table of numbers.
I mean like a table we put the coffee on that That's the type of thing that we have to work in but at the same time you have to have those abstractions You know, everyone's ever played a video game knows that the red bar is health, right? That's just The rule every that language has been developed, but what's the blue bar? Well, depends on the game, right? Could be mana, which allows you to do special things. Could be stamina. It could be, you know, your experience. There's any number of things.
We know the red one is we don't necessarily know what the blue one is. Those things are being built larger than the gaming community. Let's be honest, but they are being built, but. I think the challenging bit we have here is we don't have a really great mechanism for communication and education that we would with this is how you read a map. We don't have that.
This is how you read a 3D landscape because we 1 presume that it starts with something that's intuitive to everybody who's ever walked around and saw things and 2 there's no easy way to train on that because it's not universal yet. Or maybe never will be, but it certainly isn't now. Yeah, I was thinking you know, while you were talking about that, I mean, I totally agree too.
And I was thinking that when we have tried to kind of meld the two I was thinking about, and I don't, I don't use them anymore. I dabbled with them the AR apps where people tried to give you this, this sort of 3d view of your surroundings and show you where things were. I was thinking city lens and and this is going back years, right was one of those apps but but they really struggled with that, right?
Not well, I mean, I thought in my using of it It was a struggle in the sense that there was no sense of scale you could look and yes on the Symbols for each of the the things you could read I think that they did have distance on them but they all just popped up right because your phone is still the two dimensions trying to show three dimensions and it just It was that melding of traditional cartographic kind of labeling or traditional web label, whatever it is
with kind of the 3D world that you could see through the through the phone lens. And so, and, and again, that was just one example from, from years ago, but it, but it is not a new struggle, right, to try to figure out.
How we can blend some of the things that symbols are really good at Which is again enhancing information about the world around you so you don't have to figure it all out yourself but also when the goal is to to have that experience is to how not to make that so difficult that it detracts from the experience that You spent the work doing the dynamic photorealism or whatever to to get and just to kick it over. Geospatial crater is an example to go and look at where we are now in that that space.
So I know people are insanely curious because I am what's question to, And it kind of like kind of actually kicks into a very small bit. Google's geospatial crater and. It's really more the, the scanning. So we're, we're seeing a lot more terrestrial LIDAR, a lot more structure from motion being used to create. The 3D models, you can grab an app on your phone and scan your whole house and get a 3D version of it. You can, you know, go out and scan a fire hydrant that you can put into a game.
You can I mean, there's so many tools now to be able to capture these photorealistic aspects. But just as important as the texture of that object is the model, the 3D point cloud, 3D mesh, whether it's a 10, whether it's a traditional gaming mesh, whatever you're, you're talking about. So it's the question then of how much of that should we be looking at as the geospatial industry of course, that. That really takes us a lot of times into that need to move more into the game engine environment.
But there is, you know, you can bring in OBJ and FBX files, I think into, you know, a lot of the 3D mapping applications currently. So it's not like we can't just bring those models in. It's just, are they the best place? Is it something that we should be looking at? Or is that getting too much? Detailed for the geography of the map, as opposed to the geography of the environment landscape, that is kind of a separation there. Yeah, that's a really interesting question.
And I was just thinking of, so when we talk about meshes or tens or any of those things, they're, they're not, they're not perfect representations, but they're. Increasingly at a density. That's the word I want to look for that. The differences are relatively unimportant, like, so, you know, your, your, your roof line doesn't go on a straight line, but when you go down and look at it, you go, it looks kind of like a straight line, looks pretty close to a straight line.
And in fact, with your gutters over top of it, they probably would go on pretty much a straight line. And so therefore it looks a lot more straight line. Because the gutters obscure the fact that your shingles don't 100 percent line up and, you know, a branch fell on it, bent 1, all that sort of stuff like that. And it does leave the question of, do I care in my 3D models? Does it matter?
And I was thinking of I can't remember what, what they're called, but the shells that you learn in calculus, if you're taking calculus, one of the methods that you learn how to find the area in our curve is they use these shells, which basically draw a bunch of rectangles and. Add up the volume of all the rectangles. And that gives you an approximation of the volume underneath a curve. That's a limiting factor because you always have a bit of error because you can't perfectly do the curve.
And only thing you do is make more and more rectangles. At some point it's sort of lost. You just, you're not gaining anything really. You have to go jump to another method, which is, you know, how we learned about integrals and derivatives and that sort of thing, but that's calculus. I think a similar thing happens with, with this stuff is that we have to balance out.
I have to figure out how to balance out what our advisor would have called courses for courses which is what's the scale that's useful for what you're trying to communicate. I really like the sugar pills, to be honest with you, that, you know, basically use a basic rectangle with very little details as a way to communicate the landscape without actually getting into the nuances of what that roof line doesn't quite follow that pitch.
I think that's very powerful and very useful, and it's also a lot easier to develop. As long as you have building heights, you can kind of just do it with footprints, but, you know, I can see where particularly for 3D representations, not 2. 5D, but 3D representations, that's just inadequate. Let's say some of the, when I think about this, I think about in recent years, the really cool work being done for verticalness for things like.
For verticalness for objects like climbing paths on mountains that are being done and a lot of the time using new ways of doing drone paths in order to get that. And so I, I can see that being really useful and in that middle area between the, the photorealistic and the abstract for a specific purpose or a specialized purpose.
And I think, and I think, too, this is a much larger question than what we're going to talk about a few minutes here, too, is to go back to what we were some of the things we were talking about early on, right, is the amount of detail as we see more and more two and a half and 3D represent, 3D representations sometimes the amount of detail might suggest to users the amount of legitimacy, too.
And as they get more used to seeing things, then they are going to, as you, as you had said before, Frank, kind of get distracted with wait a minute. Yeah, that side of my house doesn't have a gutter. Why is there a gutter on this model? Right. Or some such. So. We we run into a situation where we make decisions just as we do I think the biggest shocker in teaching cartography is the concept of generalization, right?
That cartographers make active decisions on symbols to remove detail When it is necessary at certain scales, right? So The fact that all of it has to be a process of choosing the right The right horse for the right course, right, in terms of scale. And I think it's a huge issue in kind of the 3D realm because unnecessary detail isn't just a visual problem. It also becomes a performance problem, potentially, and there's all kinds of other things.
But that's it, though, is as people see more photorealism, is that then what they're going to come to expect. And so if you don't have that detail, you know, Then, you know, maybe, you know, your data becomes suspect or there might be other implications there. And I, by the way, just started thinking about this. So I'm not even sure kind of what my thoughts are on it yet. But, but that's an interesting kind of take on the evolution of our capability. Once people see those things.
Or is our audience then going to change their thoughts taking what Sue said? It makes me think about does it then create a digital divide?
Between the ego if you're creating legitimacy through photorealism where somebody has the money to keep that up then where does that leave the the people that they they might create something that that's very realistic and then ages very quickly What popped in my head thinking about this is that my general ethos is punk rock and by that I mean Most of punk rock is not necessarily perfectly in time. They're not at a certain beats per minute throughout the entire song.
They're playing usually simplified chords that aren't that complicated. They're playing they're not always hitting them, right? There's a lot of error in that. But I love it. I actually love it. I enjoy every part of it. It doesn't have to be intricate and complicated and perfect and all that sort of stuff for me to just go. Yeah, let's just that's wonderful. It makes me feel things. And I kind of feel like that's a philosophy that we would do well to embrace that.
You know, it doesn't have, don't, you know, a more simpler version of that is don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But in any of our cartographic representations, whether they be intended to be hyper realistic or intended to be abstract, I think that the intent is there's a story or there's a message that I'm trying to communicate with my cartographic representation. Make sure that's it. That's what's being communicated. Everything else is either in service to it or who cares?
It's messy. I don't. Don't worry about it. People are, are very familiar as a whole with having to make imperfect information and make decisions. I'm sorry, based upon imperfect information. Can I get to the restaurant on time to meet my friends? I'm assuming traffic's going to be okay because it usually is. And then you get stuck behind a truck and then you're going to be late.
Well, you still made a decision on when to leave, but not knowing whether or not there would be any trucks on the road that day. So there's. Okay. That's something we all do as a natural course of action. And I kind of feel like we need to train people more to think more punk rock.
Cartography wise to say, don't worry about it doesn't matter this is what you need to be thinking about and focused on and we can do that somewhat with our cartographic choices by bringing certain things to the for metaphorically, not literally and pushing things further back, but we also can encourage people by explaining how they can.
They can interpret these cartographic representations are, and that is that is, that is a series of responses to my two perspectives on Sue's generalized topic switch. I'm sure we'll revisit in another way, but it's been a while since we talked about the idea of 3D and cartography. So it was, it was time. I think it's been, you know, what, 4 or 5 years. And that is weird that we can always say, well, it's been 4 or 5 years or 10 years. It's been 15 years.
Well, we can embrace our, we can embrace almost well. Two of our Southern roots and say, it's been a spell. I never, I don't think I've ever said that me either, but I like doing it occasionally in these contexts because it amuses me. Okay. Or pieces in a piece. And so let us know what you think about how you're using cartographic concepts in your 3d analysis representations. There we go. Representations onto the events corner, as always check out these events and others near you.
. So the QGIS user conference 2025 is taking place June 2nd through third in nor coping Sweden. And I know I mispronounced that because I did listen to how it's pronounced today. And then I totally just forgot. I, I listened to her, listened to it, and I said, that's all you nor copying. Of course, if you'd like us to add your event. In Sweden or in other places to the podcasts, send us an email podcast at very spatial. com.
If you'd like to reach us individually, I can be reached at Sue at very spatial. com. I can be reached at Barb at very spatial. com. You can reach me at Frank at very spatial. com. I'm available at Jesse at very spatial. com and at kind of spatial. And you can find all of our contact information over at very spatial. com slash contacts. As always. We're the folks from very spatial. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in a couple weeks. Storytelling.