24 oblasts, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol, in Ukraine's internationally recognised borders. Click a region.
Mode
Hover or tap a region for a summary. The chart below ranks all 27 units by population density; your selection is highlighted.
Press Start.
Score0/0
Streak0
Mean miss- km
Click two points on the map, or choose cities. The map distance is a straight line on the Lambert conformal conic projection; the true distance is the great-circle (haversine) distance on a spherical Earth.
Great circle- km
Map line- km
Difference- %
Over terrain- km
Bearing- deg
Max height- m
Question: how far can a flat map's straight line be from the true distance? The page measures all 325 pairs of the 26 administrative centres and compares the map line with the great-circle distance.
The science
Map projection. The model uses a Lambert conformal conic projection (standard parallels 46 and 52 degrees N, centre 49 N / 31 E, WGS84). A cone is laid over the Earth and touches it along the two standard parallels, where the map is exactly to scale. Between them scale is slightly too small (down to about 0.99), outside slightly too large. Angles are preserved, distances are not: k = (n * rho) / (a * m) with n = (ln m1 - ln m2) / (ln t1 - ln t2).
Great-circle distance. On a sphere of radius R = 6371 km the shortest path between two points is d = 2R asin sqrt( sin²(dphi/2) + cos phi1 cos phi2 sin²(dlambda/2) ) (haversine). The Earth is an oblate ellipsoid, so this is accurate to roughly 0.3 %. The "map line" is the straight segment between the projected points; the comparison shows the projection error, not an error of the Earth model.
Relief. Elevations come from the open AWS terrain tiles (SRTM-derived, about 400 m cells at this latitude), resampled to the map projection. The 3D mesh uses triangles about 3 km wide, so summits are smoothed (Hoverla is shown a few hundred metres low); a baked normal map restores fine shading. Heights are exaggerated (default 14x) because Ukraine is mostly flat: the highest point, Hoverla, is 2,061 m, while the map is about 1,300 km wide.
Boundaries. Oblast outlines are from geoBoundaries (OpenStreetMap-based, ODbL) and were clipped to the Natural Earth coastline, simplified to about 0.7 km and inset slightly so tiles show a gap. They show Ukraine's internationally recognised borders, including Crimea (UN General Assembly Resolution 68/262). Areas listed per region are the official figures; the outline area is measured here on the WGS84 ellipsoid and differs by a fraction of a percent because of coastline detail and simplification.
Population. Figures are rounded, pre-2022 official estimates (2022 for the oblasts and Kyiv; 2013 for Crimea and Sevastopol, the last Ukrainian estimate). They are not current: the war has displaced millions of people and no up-to-date census exists. Density is simply population divided by area.
Natural zones. Polissia (northern mixed forest and wetland lowland), forest-steppe (centre), steppe (south and east) and the Carpathians (west) grade into each other and cross oblast borders. The colour layer shows each oblast's dominant zone; the card lists all zones that matter in it.
Quiz and survey. The quiz scores clicks against the tile under the pointer and reports your miss distance from the oblast centre by haversine. The experiment evaluates all pairs of admin centres. Simplifications: spherical haversine, flat 3 km mesh, rounded populations, city coordinates to about 1 km. Not affiliated with any government or map publisher.
Data sources. Boundaries: geoBoundaries (OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL). Coastline and rivers: Natural Earth (public domain). Elevation and bathymetry: AWS Terrain Tiles (SRTM, GEBCO, ETOPO1 and other open sources). The 3D assets (tiles, relief, markers, board) were built in Blender 5.2 and baked with Cycles.