3D maps - I'm concerned

I am one of those crazy people who actually focus on phase Three and haven’t sold any tiles. Why? Well, because I would never forgive myself if I sold the tiles that would later have ended up being my most valuable for gameplay.

At this point we don’t know enough to really be sure what’s valuable.

Shane has said several times that bigger plots come with some advantages and he recently clarified that class indeed will somehow matter, and that’s about it. What this really means only time can tell. Another reason for me not selling is that I’m putting HOURS - no joke - into researching the area around the tiles I want to buy, whatever strategy I aim for. I have tried to cover as much as possible: AR, foot traffic, size, class, shape, country, only to name a few. I’ve made sure I got a little of everything. With this being said, and as a player very focused on the long term goal, what I’m most excited about is probably the look and shape of the land I buy. I have a lot mountains and cool landscape for phase 3. That's when I think this strategy will really become valuable. Of course my heart took a jump in pure joy when reading the announcement that 3D maps is something that’s not too far away now! The option has been known ever since the official Mapbox partnership reveal where Mapbox wrote a blog article of Earth2. There was a picture that clearly showed the 3D option available, but we didn’t get any indication on a timeframe.

Picture from Mapbox blogpost. Find it here.

I’ve been looking into the Mapbox 3D map ever since. However, there are many things that concern me about it. We will of course get a distortion when comparing our round earth with a flat map. This is already well known, and it shows clearly when viewing the exact location of tiles that I’ve bought. When I compare the texture of the satellite map with the Mapbox 3D map, I realize that this distortion will be extreme in some cases.

Not only is the map slightly off regarding the location of heights. It’s also won’t show the shapes of heights correctly. I realized that my many hours spent to find the very exact location of the highest mountain top in an area will have been in vain and that the location slightly has moved in the Mapbox version. Also some of my tiles appear bigger or smaller on the 3D map. This naturally brings up so many questions....

Will the 3D map we get with Mapbox display the heights we are doing to get in phase 3 or could we still rely on real life heights? I believe that when the map is live, way more people are going to change the way they make future placement of tiles since the majority have failed to have this aspect in mind. I did, but yet I will have made so many purchases that I’ll feel bad about because of Mapbox not being accurate to reality.

Pico Cão Grande, São Tomé

Pico Cão Grande on Mapbox 3D I think this will be something that many will get mad about later too. It’s hard to explain this without showing you exactly what I mean, but I will try to make another post where I go more into detail. I want to provide some more example photos or even videos! Until then, let me know if you have any other thoughts regarding the subject!