Huge 3D Map Book!

Infinite Perspectives

Two Thousand Years of Three-Dimensional Mapmaking
Brian M. Ambroziak and Jeffrey R. Ambroziak

14.5 x 12.5 in; 116 pp; 100 color, comes with 2 fold-out maps and 2 3D glasses

(Contains 20 3D images)

This huge atlas like tome includes many maps and information on 3D Map making.  It is a good reference along with being a good coffee table book. 

FOR OVER TWO THOUSAND YEARS, mapmakers have struggled with the problem of representing a three-dimensional planet on a two-dimensional canvas. Infinite Perspectives traces the artistic and scientific evolution of the age-old quest to conquer this challenge. From ancient Greek coins to detailed nineteenth-century Swiss Alpine maps to the inconceivably scaled landscapes of Mars, more than eighty color maps illustrate history's most enduring attempts to pay cartographic homage to the multidimensional landscape.

An additional twenty plates present a revolutionary cartographic technique that allows viewers wearing ordinary 3D glasses to examine the Earth and beyond with an accuracy and clarity undreamed of even a generation ago. The first comprehensive overview of the ancient saga of relief mapmaking, Infinite Perspectives is a treasure for the map enthusiast, the cartographer, and the explorer in all of us.

Whether from military necessity or unbridled curiosity, mapmakers since early antiquity have attempted to represent the configuration of the land about them. The Greeks paid homage to the landscape and struck its image on their coins. Medieval scholars viewed the highest elevations as a boundary between the physical and the spiritual; the images they created of their sacred shrines and historic sites were drawn atop simple caricatures of mountains. Leonardo da Vinci's maps of Tuscany and other more realistic representations of landforms appeared during the Renaissance, thanks to a wealth of scientific study and new artistic methods.

In the modern era, new techniques were invented as attempts to portray the three-dimensional world on a flat surface became more sophisticated. Hachuring, a system that involves shading with fine parallel or crossed lines, was developed with the use of copper plates; contour lines slowly replaced this technique in the nineteenth century. Lithography allowed for the introduction of color to the printing process, and multi-color tints were used to impart a sense of elevation. Aerial and satellite photography and the dawn of the digital era have yielded maps of unprecedented realism; today's computer technology allows planetary surfaces to be portrayed in three dimensions with a precision unimaginable to previous generations of mapmakers.

Infinite Perspectives traces the artistic and scientific evolution of topographic representation from its origins to the present. Over 80 vivid color plates of some of the most significant maps ever made detail important advances in the portrayal of three dimensions in map form. The final section of the book contains 20 plates presenting a revolutionary cartographic technique that allows viewers wearing ordinary 3D glasses to view planetary surfaces without distortion. This invention, developed by the authors with Dr. Russell Ambroziak and named Infinite Perspective Projection, is currently in use by NASA and the Department of Defense. Included are maps of Mars, the Grand Canyon, and Mount McKinley, as well as one large fold-out map, suitable for framing; two pairs of the necessary 3D viewing glasses are also provided.

Review from The New Yorker "Following 'An Atlas of Rare City Maps' and 'Bird's Eye Views' comes this stunning cartographic anthology that examines verticality in mapping from ancient Iraq to the twenty-first century. In these colorful pages, mountains and molehills bubble up in relief maps of Imperial Roman highways and Leonardo's Tuscany, while the dramatic contours of the Grand Canyon are captured in exquisitely accurate, eye-popping 3-D, courtesy of the futuristic Ambroziak Infinite Perspective Projection."