Geographic Projection

The Geographic Projection　 is a treasure in. It is the southern hemisphere of a ; this being a representation of Earth suggests that PNF-404 is Earth. Retrieving the treasure unlocks the Survey Chart, part of the Exploration Kit, which allows the Pikmin leaders to progress to the Perplexing Pool and, when the debt has been repaid, the Wistful Wild. This is because it contains data that holds coordinates that makes locating this new area possible. The Spherical Atlas is also a globe half, this time a northern hemisphere, and it too unlocks an area to land in (the Awakening Wood).

The name is a reference to, a way of mapping a sphere's surface onto a flat plane.

Collecting the treasure
The item is found in the same place as the Yellow Onion in the first game. This heavy treasure is found in the Awakening Wood, making it the only aboveground treasure that makes up the Explorer's Friend Series, and requires Purple Pikmin to be picked up, due to the fact that its weight is 101 and thus 100 weaker Pikmin cannot lift it. It is slightly buried and located near the longest constructible bridge in the area, behind a poison gate near the Hole of Beasts. A Creeping Chrysanthemum is nearby.

Model and texture
Just like the Spherical Atlas, this treasure's model was also changed in each region of the game such that the "front" of the model is a specific part of the globe. Unlike the Spherical Atlas however, these locations don't quite match the region of the game's copy. In the North American version, the "front" of the globe is South America, which makes sense. But in the Japanese version, it is also South America. Since there is no area related to Japan in the southern hemisphere, South America is as good a place as any other. In the European version, it shows Oceania, perhaps to highlight the fact that Australian players use the European version.



Notably, the texture for the Geographic Projection is mirrored vertically, rather than rotated 180 degrees. This means that the landmasses appear backwards, and it's not possible to align the two treasures into a complete globe, as the texture for the Spherical Atlas is not mirrored.

Like the Spherical Atlas, the highlight texture is called, and is the same as the Careening Dirigibug's highlight texture. Also like the Spherical Atlas, this part of the globe is missing its pole, in this case, the South Pole. The Treasure Hoard icon for the Geographic Projection is also too low-resolution, making it hard to tell which region is being shown in it.