Reinventing the Map

The 2015 European Games is being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 12 to 28 June 2015. This will be the inaugural event of the new European Games, an international mini-Olympics type event for athletes representing the National Olympic Committees of Europe.

The Journey of the Flame is a very interesting map which shows the route of the Baku 2015 torch relay. This futuristic 3d map was built using WebGL and three.js. When zoomed out the map presents a traditional top down map view. As you zoom in the map transitions to present an oblique view of Azerbaijan and the route of the torch relay.

If you select a town on the map you can view social messages posted by map users at that location. To view a message just select one of the individual flames shooting out of the torch that appears over the town.

The map isn't entirely successful. The town labels are very unclear when the map is zoomed out (the labels should be larger when the map is zoomed out). It is also a bit difficult to view the route on the map. The route would be more clear if a contrast color to the map background was used. However you can use the timeline at the top of the map to navigate more easily to individual towns on the torch relay route.