The map, in the projection the mission demands.

A fixed Web-Mercator canvas distorts catastrophically past ~70° latitude and hides the true shape of long-range routes. Dynamic map projection lets the operator switch the displayed projection at runtime — Polar Stereographic for arctic operations, Gnomonic so great circles render as straight lines, Lambert Conformal Conic for regional air-defense sectors. The same data, the right geometry, on demand.

Polar StereographicGnomonicLambert Conformal Conic Azimuthal EquidistantRuntime switch

Why projection matters

Mercator lies at the poles and at range

Web Mercator is fine at the equator and catastrophic elsewhere. Three mission-critical distortions make a switchable projection essential:

Polar / high-latitude operations — Mercator's scale balloons past ~70°; Greenland looks bigger than Africa. Polar Stereographic shows the arctic basin truthfully.
Long-range air-route planning — a great-circle route (the shortest path) curves on Mercator but renders as a straight line on a Gnomonic projection. Mission planning becomes readable.
Regional air-defense sectors — a nation's air-defense sector is defined in its native projection (often Lambert Conformal Conic or Azimuthal Equidistant). Displaying it in Mercator warps the sector boundaries; displaying it natively preserves range/bearing truth.

🧭

Reprojection ≠ display projection

The platform has always reprojected source data on ingest (UTM, State Plane → WGS84 view) and converted coordinate text (DD/DMS/MGRS/GARS). Dynamic display projection is the third layer: the canvas itself changes projection. The same data, re-rendered against a new spatial reference.

The projection set

The 4–6 that cover the real defense use cases

Not chasing the full 26-projection engine — delivering the projections that real defense and intel workflows demand. Each is a 2D MapView mode with a settable spatial reference.

❄️

Polar Stereographic

The arctic and antarctic basins, undistorted. Essential for high-latitude SAR, polar routes, and Arctic-domain awareness.

✈️

Gnomonic

Great circles as straight lines. The projection for long-range air-route and missile-profile planning.

📐

Lambert Conformal Conic

Mid-latitude regional accuracy — the standard for national mapping, air-defense sectors, and aviation charts.

🎯

Azimuthal Equidistant

True direction and distance from a central point — the "range rings" projection for radar coverage and sensor reach.

Vector-tile (MVT) data is a head start here: serving MVT into a non-Mercator view (reprojecting geometry at render) is easier than reprojecting raster basemap tiles. The platform's DuckDB/MVT path is an asset, not a thing to replace.