High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The equirectangular projection (also called the equidirectional projection, equidistant cylindrical projection, geographic projection, plate carree or carte parallelogrammatique projection or CPP) is a very simple map projection attributed to Marinus of Tyre, who Ptolemy claims invented the projection about AD 100. The projection maps meridians to equally spaced vertical straight lines, and circles of latitude to evenly spread horizontal straight lines. The projection is neither equal area nor conformal. Because of the distortions introduced by this projection, it has little use in navigation or cadastral mapping and finds its main use in thematic mapping. In particular, the plate carree has become a de facto standard for global raster datasets, such as Celestia and NASA World Wind, because of the particularly simple relationship between the position of an image pixel on the map and its corresponding geographic location on Earth. Данное...