The R-QBAM main thread

[27zipski]

Hi Tany, I took the opportunity to update the glacier map you posted back in February. As I don't want to make editorial guesses while "covering" the Alaska border, I'll leave that and any other corrections for you to make whenever you get the time. One question that may have been answered before: are the glaciers on the African volcanoes (and Hood, Adams, and St. Helens for that matter) too small to show up at this scale?

 

[JG Online]

Be careful with your source for Greenland and Antarctica! The datasets LOVE to contradict each other there, especially in northern Greenland
I personally trust NASA maps the most, so ig use them as a reference

The region encircled in red is the most distinct feature to compare between datasets for me, it should look almost exactly like that (basically the northern peninsula shouldn't end east of the easternmost point of the peninsula to the south, and the islands to the east should look like that

This is a good call, NASA maps are very high accuracy and can be found on an anual base at Blue Marble, I support using them as reference as I am doing the same over on the HEART thread

 

[CHKeeley]

She's very much still a work in progress, but I'm working on a January 1, 1936 map. Wouldn't be nearly so difficult, but for my insistence on creating administrative borders for every country. Most of Western Europe is done to something approaching my satisfaction, but I still need to go over everything and compare it to previously existing R-QBAM borders so mine isn't completely out of alignment with what others have done. Attempting to draw the okrugs within each Soviet oblast has proved to be very annoying because of both the dearth of solid maps and the interwar Soviet bureaucracy's penchant for changing their administrative border every two to three years. I thought I had completed the Leningrad Oblast and then suddenly found out that an entirely new oblast was created which split the thing in half. Still kind of working everything out, but I am satisfied with the ocean aesthetic which I had achieved on Q-BAM and managed to bring over to R-QBAM. Of course, if anyone would like it without those frills, I'd be happy to provide that when its finished! I hope to turn this into a series once I get this finished, but we'll see. I have a tendency to overpromise and then burn out really fast.

 

[TheFederalist]

View attachment 872164
She's very much still a work in progress, but I'm working on a January 1, 1936 map. Wouldn't be nearly so difficult, but for my insistence on creating administrative borders for every country. Most of Western Europe is done to something approaching my satisfaction, but I still need to go over everything and compare it to previously existing R-QBAM borders so mine isn't completely out of alignment with what others have done. Attempting to draw the okrugs within each Soviet oblast has proved to be very annoying because of both the dearth of solid maps and the interwar Soviet bureaucracy's penchant for changing their administrative border every two to three years. I thought I had completed the Leningrad Oblast and then suddenly found out that an entirely new oblast was created which split the thing in half. Still kind of working everything out, but I am satisfied with the ocean aesthetic which I had achieved on Q-BAM and managed to bring over to R-QBAM. Of course, if anyone would like it without those frills, I'd be happy to provide that when its finished! I hope to turn this into a series once I get this finished, but we'll see. I have a tendency to overpromise and then burn out really fast.

If possible in the future, I would personally love to see a full ocean layer like that, once the R-QBAM is finished. Otherwise, fantastic work you've done here!

 

[Alex Richards]

View attachment 872164
She's very much still a work in progress, but I'm working on a January 1, 1936 map. Wouldn't be nearly so difficult, but for my insistence on creating administrative borders for every country. Most of Western Europe is done to something approaching my satisfaction, but I still need to go over everything and compare it to previously existing R-QBAM borders so mine isn't completely out of alignment with what others have done. Attempting to draw the okrugs within each Soviet oblast has proved to be very annoying because of both the dearth of solid maps and the interwar Soviet bureaucracy's penchant for changing their administrative border every two to three years. I thought I had completed the Leningrad Oblast and then suddenly found out that an entirely new oblast was created which split the thing in half. Still kind of working everything out, but I am satisfied with the ocean aesthetic which I had achieved on Q-BAM and managed to bring over to R-QBAM. Of course, if anyone would like it without those frills, I'd be happy to provide that when its finished! I hope to turn this into a series once I get this finished, but we'll see. I have a tendency to overpromise and then burn out really fast.

I think you've got the modern Ceremonial borders in the UK there? With a couple of missing borders in England by the looks of it.

The difficulty is that the County Boroughs were administratively entirely independent from the rest of the counties and they mostly just aren't going to show up on this scale even though they're functionally at the same level as, for example, Northamptonshire or the East Riding. And in this era both are first level divisions.

You could group those with their respective administrative counties though?

 

[Tanystropheus42]

One more update squeaks in before the end of November; Brazil 4, this one covering six states of Central Brazil plus the Federal District of Brasilia. Nothing much to say here really, everything was fairly straightforward, which was a nice change of pace.

As mentioned previously, next up I'll be returning to Canada for Nunavut 1, which will basically be Baffin Island and as many more adjacent islands as I can get through before I throw in the towel and go back to Brazil. I'll also probably do a mild-to-moderate overhaul of Quebec and Labrador as well and throw that in with Nunavut 1. After that, Southern Brazil, which will mostly finish off the country barring a few odds and ends that'll be added later, then Nunavut 2, covering a good chunk of the mainland of that territory to probably round out the year.

But first, some replies, because I haven't done this in ages.

Be careful with your source for Greenland and Antarctica! The datasets LOVE to contradict each other there, especially in northern Greenland
I personally trust NASA maps the most, so ig use them as a reference

The region encircled in red is the most distinct feature to compare between datasets for me, it should look almost exactly like that (basically the northern peninsula shouldn't end east of the easternmost point of the peninsula to the south, and the islands to the east should look like that

For Greenland I was mostly using a mixture of this NASA map in conjunction with this standard Robinson webmap to get an idea of projection distortion, with the ESA land-cover data for 2020 overlaid to give me an idea where the ice sheets are. The disparity I commented on last post is between the base Robinson and the ESA overlay, as the ESA data, which I assume was produced later, shows permanent water extending further inland along fjords than the basemap does.

I had already noticed the discrepancy you pointed out, and both the webmap Robinson and the ESA land cover overlay appear to conform with what it should be.

Alright, this wasn't as "simple" as I think would be, but hey the US west coast + about 40% of Bristish Columbia too are done now!

Good to see progress getting made, and good luck with Canada. Hopefully it doesn't end up being too horrible.

Hi Tany, I took the opportunity to update the glacier map you posted back in February. As I don't want to make editorial guesses while "covering" the Alaska border, I'll leave that and any other corrections for you to make whenever you get the time. One question that may have been answered before: are the glaciers on the African volcanoes (and Hood, Adams, and St. Helens for that matter) too small to show up at this scale?

I'll be posting the next official Ice-cover layer once I've done the Americas, probably at some point early in the new year. As to your question, a few of the ice sheets topping the mountains of Washington State are visible as single pixels, however no African mountains had large enough ice sheets that they got shown, at least by my estimation.

She's very much still a work in progress, but I'm working on a January 1, 1936 map. Wouldn't be nearly so difficult, but for my insistence on creating administrative borders for every country. Most of Western Europe is done to something approaching my satisfaction, but I still need to go over everything and compare it to previously existing R-QBAM borders so mine isn't completely out of alignment with what others have done. Attempting to draw the okrugs within each Soviet oblast has proved to be very annoying because of both the dearth of solid maps and the interwar Soviet bureaucracy's penchant for changing their administrative border every two to three years. I thought I had completed the Leningrad Oblast and then suddenly found out that an entirely new oblast was created which split the thing in half. Still kind of working everything out, but I am satisfied with the ocean aesthetic which I had achieved on Q-BAM and managed to bring over to R-QBAM. Of course, if anyone would like it without those frills, I'd be happy to provide that when its finished! I hope to turn this into a series once I get this finished, but we'll see. I have a tendency to overpromise and then burn out really fast.

Really nice to see someone else taking my 1929 map and expanding it, good work with what you've done so far. Just out of curiosity, how accurate are you finding the original, especially the admin divisions of the interwar-era USSR? As you said, they changed constantly, and finding good maps can be a real pain, so I'd like to know how well you think my work stands up.

Oh, there have been one or two minor basemap patches to Europe since I made the 1929 map, but a revised blank map incorporating those changes is in the pipeline (probably after I've done the Americas).


Replies done, on with ...




Patch 104 - Brazil 4 (Central Brazil);
- Added Rondonia
- Added Matto Grosso
- Added Goias
- Added the Brazilian Federal District
- Added Minas Gerais
- Added Espirito Santo
- Added Rio de Janeiro

 

[Spinovenator]

I have a question about QBAM and R-QBAM:
Does the western boundary on the map coincide with the US-Russia maritime border in Alaska (-168.976944 W - 180 = -11.023056 E)? Or is it another number?
If no one knows exactly, no problem, I need this information to do a reprojection. In case you don't know, what do you think would be the ideal location?
Personally, I think -11.023056 E might be an option, although on some maps I have seen -10 E as a more accurate coordinate that is likely to be used standardly in general cartography. Does anyone know of another number that is generally used?

 

[Rac98]

I have a question about QBAM and R-QBAM:
Does the western boundary on the map coincide with the US-Russia maritime border in Alaska (-168.976944 W - 180 = -11.023056 E)? Or is it another number?
If no one knows exactly, no problem, I need this information to do a reprojection. In case you don't know, what do you think would be the ideal location?
Personally, I think -11.023056 E might be an option, although on some maps I have seen -10 E as a more accurate coordinate that is likely to be used standardly in general cartography. Does anyone know of another number that is generally used?

R-QBAM uses the 10° meridian east as it's prime one in order to get easy reference projections, the original QBAM is supposedly somewhere around 10,5° E to 11° E as it's prime;
Both the choices to pick a prime meridian on the that region is to try to not get Chukotka or Alaska mainlands split between the borders and avoid spliting any islands on the Pacific... Unfortuantely that's is literelly impossible, no matter where you put the prime meridian on Earth it always split an landmass, and the possible prime meridians with less land splited (mainly St. Larwence Island on the Bering Sea, which will be the case on R-QBAM) is the range from 10° E to 12° E.
Now you may wonder that on QBAM there's not a single island splited on te map border, and the reason for that is, well, that QBAM is wrong, literally, for some reason it has more ocean between Alaska and Chukotka than what should have and also the whole map is not symmetrical between north and south hemispheres... Because os these reasons, and the fact no one knows what exactly QBAM projection is, that the Robison (projection) QBAM existis, to solve these inconsistences and provide an easy way to get acurate reference maps to work on.

 

[shearsforest]

Unfortuantely that's is literelly impossible, no matter where you put the prime meridian on Earth it always split an landmass

Gee thanks, Antarctica!

 

[Rac98]

Gee thanks, Antarctica!

Oh yeah, I forgot Antartica is always splited (LOL)... You did get my point

 

[Altaic]

instead we should use an oblique projection centered on like 10 E 20 S so that even Antarctica stays undivided! /s

 

[Spinovenator]

I guess this one will not conform to the @Tanystropheus42 R-QBAM projection, but I have been doing a reprojection of a version I made of a VTBAM reduced to 9KBAM, to conform to R-QBAM standards. In the end I have made the decision to center the map on the 11th meridian east because it is the only entire meridian that separates Asia and North America following @Rac98 's advice. I have just uploaded all the ones I have made in series to my deviantart, I will probably continue to complete them little by little, but for the moment here is this one with the data that GProjector provides for countries, lakes and rivers. Soon I will make a projection of the polar zones.

https://www.deviantart.com/spinovenator/art/R-QBAM-Overlayed-countries-lakes-and-rivers-998981219

 

[DaniCBP]

View attachment 872164
She's very much still a work in progress, but I'm working on a January 1, 1936 map. Wouldn't be nearly so difficult, but for my insistence on creating administrative borders for every country. Most of Western Europe is done to something approaching my satisfaction, but I still need to go over everything and compare it to previously existing R-QBAM borders so mine isn't completely out of alignment with what others have done. Attempting to draw the okrugs within each Soviet oblast has proved to be very annoying because of both the dearth of solid maps and the interwar Soviet bureaucracy's penchant for changing their administrative border every two to three years. I thought I had completed the Leningrad Oblast and then suddenly found out that an entirely new oblast was created which split the thing in half. Still kind of working everything out, but I am satisfied with the ocean aesthetic which I had achieved on Q-BAM and managed to bring over to R-QBAM. Of course, if anyone would like it without those frills, I'd be happy to provide that when its finished! I hope to turn this into a series once I get this finished, but we'll see. I have a tendency to overpromise and then burn out really fast.

Overall a great map!
However, in Spain, I've noticed a couple of mistakes:
First, the subdivisions by themselves: Galicia, Catalonia and Euskadi have outlines indicating autonomy (I suppose), which are incorrect for the time being:
- Galicia: the Statute of Autonomy was developed and approved in popular vote in June 1936, but was never applied due to the Civil War.
- Euskadi / Basque Country: the Statute of Autonomy was actually approved in October 1936 after the Civil War had started, but not by January 1st.
- Catalonia: its Statute, approved in 1932, was abolished in 1934 after the October 1934 declaration of a Catalan State, and wasn't reinstated until February 1936 after the elections.
Furthermore, these three regions have a different border colour, I suppose because you're portraying them as a 1st level subdivision with its provinces as 2nd level. However, by that time, these weren't the only 1st level subdivision by themselves, they weren't special in any way, and the whole territory was made of them:

 

[CHKeeley]

Hey everyone - here's an update with some corrections that folks kindly offered up and a few more countries worked on. I am satisfied with Romania, Yugoslavia, and Poland although the Hungarian divisions are somewhat suspect since I cannot for the life of me locate a map showing the interwar administrative divisions. I can only find ones beginning after the dismantlement of Czechoslovakia in 1938/1939. Latvia and Estonia too are based on general county maps since I had trouble finding period-specific administrative maps online, though I will keep looking and comparing. I finally found a few decent maps for the USSR in the appropriate period, though they only cover portions of what I will end of needing. The Belarusian and Ukrainian oblasts were finished, and the districts present until 1938 in western Ukraine and the Donbas were added. Ukraine was full of districts/smaller provinces up until 1930 and then it seems like they were entirely abolished so there isn't much more detail to add there that is possible to map at this size (raions are too small). The oblasts in Western Russia also had to be reconfigured a bit - seems like they were constantly redoing them in this period but I believe this is correct at least for January 1, 1936. The rest I will hopefully get to soon. I also redid a few divisions like the Polish ones to line up with the pre-existing 1914 basemap. I imagine I'll need to do the same with Romania but that shouldn't take to long. Hoping I can get back to this and get it done soon.

EDIT: ...aaaaaaand I'm just realizing my Germany was the first thing I drew and it was based on my initial plan of doing a 1930 map. So the Saarland should be its own Reichskommissariat as part of its reintegration into Germany under Josef Bürckel. Germany's administrative divisions should also reflect the Gau system in place since the Gleischaltung of two years previous. And for personal taste, I will change the color to be a fair bit darker since the one I chose was intended for the Weimar Republic. I got about half of that correction done this evening as well as the divisions for Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Bulgaria. Iceland got fixed up as well. But in order to prevent spam, I will hold off on posting until I've completed the damned thing. But hey - at least we now have the Prussian subdivisions if anyone wants to use those for the pre-Nazi German state!

Really nice to see someone else taking my 1929 map and expanding it, good work with what you've done so far. Just out of curiosity, how accurate are you finding the original, especially the admin divisions of the interwar-era USSR? As you said, they changed constantly, and finding good maps can be a real pain, so I'd like to know how well you think my work stands up.

Thanks! So far I think your 1929 divisions are holding up well, especially where they coincide with the 1936 divisions that I'm adding. At some point I'm considering dedicated a day to just making a chronological chart of Soviet interwar subdivisions with all the maps I can get my hands on just to make the process easier. But that is probably a bit down the road.

If possible in the future, I would personally love to see a full ocean layer like that, once the R-QBAM is finished. Otherwise, fantastic work you've done here!

Thank you! Once I'm finishe up with this, I'll try and jerry-rig the thing to work for the entire map.

You could group those with their respective administrative counties though?

Thanks for the suggestion - UK administrative divisions have been a nightmare for me to figure out, but I ended up basing the updated version above on administrative counties.

However, in Spain, I've noticed a couple of mistakes:

Appreciate the correction here too! I've hopefully corrected the mistakes in the map above.

 

[Alex Richards]

Thanks for the suggestion - UK administrative divisions have been a nightmare for me to figure out, but I ended up basing the updated version above on administrative counties.

Yeah looking at what you've got there, that's about the best choice you're going to get for that scale- and good job on not falling into the 'England/Wales/Scotland are first level divisions' trap which is literally only a thing since Devolution in the late 90s (and even then not actually the case for England...).

Only things I can think of:

- Northern Ireland had a devolved Parliament at this stage- not sure how you're showing that.
-There were a number of counties that actually were split administratively but not ceremonially- the Soke of Peterborough, the Isle of Ely, the Ridings of Yorkshire, the Parts of Lincolnshire and East and West Sussex/ Suffolk. I've done a suggestion below.

 

[Kvasir]

You probably should include Lithuania's claims on Poland which AIUI were never renounced during the interwar period?

 

[Altaic]

Uh... I have to apologize over my comments about North Greenland.
Apparently, most if not all NASA-based maps are wrong. So are ESA maps. Funnily enough, the most accurate source about polar regions might be Bing Maps satellite imagery.
About how I have reached this conclusion... I basically took a few research stations' (those in North Greenland, Svalbard and Franz Josef Land mainly) coordinates, put them in a file I had with rasters of all three sources, and I have observed that most of the coastal stations were underwater in NASA's map, ESA had issues with Greenland and a few Antarctic islands, and the most accurate one was Bing out of everything I have tested.
I have compared the maps with my eyes as well, most issues appear to arise from incorrect projections of satellite imagery into a map.

Anyway, TLDR; use Bing maps if you want, as NASA is the least accurate among NASA, ESA and Bing.

 

[JG Online]

R-QBAM uses the 10° meridian east as it's prime one in order to get easy reference projections, the original QBAM is supposedly somewhere around 10,5° E to 11° E as it's prime;
Both the choices to pick a prime meridian on the that region is to try to not get Chukotka or Alaska mainlands split between the borders and avoid spliting any islands on the Pacific... Unfortuantely that's is literelly impossible, no matter where you put the prime meridian on Earth it always split an landmass, and the possible prime meridians with less land splited (mainly St. Larwence Island on the Bering Sea, which will be the case on R-QBAM) is the range from 10° E to 12° E.
Now you may wonder that on QBAM there's not a single island splited on te map border, and the reason for that is, well, that QBAM is wrong, literally, for some reason it has more ocean between Alaska and Chukotka than what should have and also the whole map is not symmetrical between north and south hemispheres... Because os these reasons, and the fact no one knows what exactly QBAM projection is, that the Robison (projection) QBAM existis, to solve these inconsistences and provide an easy way to get acurate reference maps to work on.

I ran into this issue with HEART as well, It always really annoyed me that these Q-BAM issues were transfered onto M-BAM when we made it, so for HEART I ended up moving it 11 degrees east which basically runs through Oslo sorta, but yes you can't avoid making the cut somewhere.

I do think that cut should ideally go thought the least habited areas like St. lawrence island and not through... ya know... Fiji so I think RQ-BAM makes a smart choice here, both in terms of aesthetics and practicality

 

[PecuTheGreat]

Do you use Q-GIS in doing this and if so, what tutorials would you recommend to someone trying to do a rough 26 metres drop map in Jaredia orientation?.

 

[Mr. Temporary]

One more update squeaks in before the end of November; Brazil 4, this one covering six states of Central Brazil plus the Federal District of Brasilia. Nothing much to say here really, everything was fairly straightforward, which was a nice change of pace.

As mentioned previously, next up I'll be returning to Canada for Nunavut 1, which will basically be Baffin Island and as many more adjacent islands as I can get through before I throw in the towel and go back to Brazil. I'll also probably do a mild-to-moderate overhaul of Quebec and Labrador as well and throw that in with Nunavut 1. After that, Southern Brazil, which will mostly finish off the country barring a few odds and ends that'll be added later, then Nunavut 2, covering a good chunk of the mainland of that territory to probably round out the year.

But first, some replies, because I haven't done this in ages.



For Greenland I was mostly using a mixture of this NASA map in conjunction with this standard Robinson webmap to get an idea of projection distortion, with the ESA land-cover data for 2020 overlaid to give me an idea where the ice sheets are. The disparity I commented on last post is between the base Robinson and the ESA overlay, as the ESA data, which I assume was produced later, shows permanent water extending further inland along fjords than the basemap does.

I had already noticed the discrepancy you pointed out, and both the webmap Robinson and the ESA land cover overlay appear to conform with what it should be.



Good to see progress getting made, and good luck with Canada. Hopefully it doesn't end up being too horrible.



I'll be posting the next official Ice-cover layer once I've done the Americas, probably at some point early in the new year. As to your question, a few of the ice sheets topping the mountains of Washington State are visible as single pixels, however no African mountains had large enough ice sheets that they got shown, at least by my estimation.



Really nice to see someone else taking my 1929 map and expanding it, good work with what you've done so far. Just out of curiosity, how accurate are you finding the original, especially the admin divisions of the interwar-era USSR? As you said, they changed constantly, and finding good maps can be a real pain, so I'd like to know how well you think my work stands up.

Oh, there have been one or two minor basemap patches to Europe since I made the 1929 map, but a revised blank map incorporating those changes is in the pipeline (probably after I've done the Americas).


Replies done, on with ...




Patch 104 - Brazil 4 (Central Brazil);
- Added Rondonia
- Added Matto Grosso
- Added Goias
- Added the Brazilian Federal District
- Added Minas Gerais
- Added Espirito Santo
- Added Rio de Janeiro

View attachment 872548

Do you plan to finish every country's subdivisions after R-QBAM finishes?