For example, I believe that Egypt was a tropical jungle paradise somewhere around 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. We could also display things like how the temperate and desert bands have moved “up and down” the globe over time. Can you imagine going back in time - perhaps in a helicopter - and watching this event take place? The next best thing would be to take something like this animation and preset a high-resolution version on our “mega-sphere”: I believe the most recent occurrence came somewhere around 10,000 years ago to coincide with the end of the last ice age (which may account for stories of a “Great Flood”). We could also opt to superimpose information like today's country boarders and/or city locations onto these ancient landmasses, so we could see where New York City would have been 250 million years ago, for example, and how this location has migrated around the surface of the earth.Īnother thing that has long interested me is the fact that it is now believed the Mediterranean basin has dried up and then re-flooded multiple times over the course of millions of years. Returning to the super continent Pangaea, we could display its evolution and subsequent devolution over time. And, once again, in addition to static images, we can also display animations and videos of all sorts of things. Then there are things like the tectonic plates and the volcanoes forming the Pacific Ring of Fire. How about the ability to display the locations and types of known natural resources, such as coal and oil and rare-earths and suchlike? Again, rather than simply “painting” these on the surface, you could make the display look as though the earth were sort of transparent as though you were seeing these resources under the ground. It would also be interesting to be able to make the water disappear altogether. It would also be nice to be able to make the oceans (and big lakes) go sort of transparent, so you could see the underwater terrain like mountains and canyons. We could start with a regular display of countries with cities and borders and suchlike, and then switch to a view showing the topology and flora like mountains and forests and stuff. So, what could we do with such a display? Well, let's start by imagining how we might present the world the way it is today. I'd be happy with something as small as 18″ diameter, but I'd be bouncing off the walls with excitement if I had access to a 36″ diameter beauty. Still-and-all, as they say, I really would like something like this of my very own. I would love to have one of these little rascals to play with, but I'm not a complete idiot (my mother had me tested) and I do appreciate that something like this would be way too large and far too expensive for home use. To conclude, I must say I have enjoyed making this map and I have learned more about globe maps in D3.js and Canvas interactions in general.As we can see in the image above, this is really, really tasty. It would be nice to better refine the search, so that the city is being picked more accurate on mouse click, and make the globe spin on left click, but I will leave those improvements for another challenge. Draw the citiesĬontext.lineWidth = 0.5 / (transform.k d.ordinates)Ĭonst found = search(projection, tree, mousePos) In order to address this, I have chosen to draw the points using Canvas instead of loading the data as D3.js selections in the DOM. The biggest challenge was to visualize many points on the globe and keep the interaction fast enough at the same time. To improve the user interaction, I have set the map to rotate and center on the selected city. The user can interact with the map by zooming, panning and clicking the cities, however, if you click at a smaller zoom you might not see the city so well. First, I have explored it in QGIS, then I started mapping it on a globe using D3.js Tags: #D3js #QGIS #mapshaper #canvas #interaction #globe 3D globe map in D3.js and Canvas – making ofĬhallenges: For the 3D globe map in D3.js and Canvas, I have downloaded the countries and cities from Natural Earth, because it was one of the free data sources for the challenge. The bigger the circle, the greater the population.Ĭities with a bigger rank are more brightly coloured. The visualization shows the most populated places on Earth. You can find out more about the challenge and my other maps in this post. This is a 3D globe map in D3.js and Canvas, that I have made for the #30DayMapChallenge on Twitter in 2021. Points Populated Places on Earth □ Points
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