simplicity of neighbors; triangles 3 classes of neighbors, squares 2 classes of neighbors, hexagons only one class of neighbor!
* Subdivisions
Squares obviously do this pretty well but by alternating cw, cww rotations and allowing not quite perfect coverage they get to shard with different resolutions/hex sizes.
* Distortion
"most important" Basically the use case here is visualizations that maintain basic unit appearance. They even pick the location of their vertices to be over water minimizing land distortions.
p.s. as `contravariant` said you can't tessellate a sphere with hexagons so they project onto a icosohedron with pentagons at each of the twelve vertices (positioned over water) https://youtu.be/ay2uwtRO3QE?t=23m00s
* Neighbor traversal
simplicity of neighbors; triangles 3 classes of neighbors, squares 2 classes of neighbors, hexagons only one class of neighbor!
* Subdivisions
Squares obviously do this pretty well but by alternating cw, cww rotations and allowing not quite perfect coverage they get to shard with different resolutions/hex sizes.
* Distortion
"most important" Basically the use case here is visualizations that maintain basic unit appearance. They even pick the location of their vertices to be over water minimizing land distortions.
source: https://youtu.be/ay2uwtRO3QE?t=11m53s
p.s. as `contravariant` said you can't tessellate a sphere with hexagons so they project onto a icosohedron with pentagons at each of the twelve vertices (positioned over water) https://youtu.be/ay2uwtRO3QE?t=23m00s