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Terrain 3 Read Me

Concept: 3D maps on your home page

There are a great many apps for creating 2D maps. There are a few quite sophisticated apps for creating 3D maps. See Links of Interest below.

There are, however, few ways to get going with 3D mapping if you are an entry level coder.

There are a great many ways of linking and embedding maps from remote servers into web pages. There are, however, few ways to get going with all the data and scripts on a static server - such as with GitHub Pages.

So, let's get going!

Two samples of what's here

full screen: Elevations View Path CSV

Each time you load this page a random location appears

Sample 1: Elevations View Path CSV ~ a script for displaying 3D data with 2D overlays. It's one of our favorite projects and a good place to start exploring.

full screen: Earth Globe Displacement Map

Sample 2: Earth Globe Displacement Map ~ a simple JavaScript for creating a 3D earth. 128 lines of code to create over two millions data points. The power to create new worlds is in your hands!

Mission

• To supply numerous FOSS cookbook samples so as to make mapping as easy as baking a pie
• To demo how to access online data sources and mash-up new displays and visualizations from that data
• An investigation into writing very simple code that can access the Google Maps API

Vision

• To go where nobody has gone before

Features

• The Coding Style used here could be of interest
• And the on-the-fly menu system as well
• This is R3 of an effort several years old. The best aspects of previous work will be rebuilt, tested and carried forward here.
• We eat our own 3D dog food here. If you see something move here, then it's a 3D script you can interact with. Bitmaps are for flatland peeps.
• We don't try to be realistic. We do try to be artistic, gametistic - and fantastic. We highlight the diffs. We give evidence to eruption and erosion. We are entropy-neurs.

Goals

• To anything Three.js can do - with a map
• To do anything a map can so - with added Three.js goodness
• Google Maps is a truly great app, but so often it let's you think that the Earth is flat. Guess what? Earth has bumps and dips. Each more beautiful than the next. We need help exploring them.

Links of Interest

Closely related projects

• Analemma 3D, Shadow Range Gallery and Ladybug Web
• FGx Globe, FGx Plane Spotter and FGx Sandbox

Background material

• Dev Notes
• Coding Style

Nice Stuff

• Google Maps API
• Verne: The Himalayas

Online 3D Map Making

• Google Earth
  • Note that home page shows static 2D images
• Cesium
  • 2016-08-04 ~ Note that home page demo appears to be broken
• Web World Wind
  • Note that home page shows static 2D images

The map is not the territory

When you show a 3D map to many peeps, they say they want it to look 'realistic'. 'Realism' is but one of many aspects of cartography. Of couse, it's one of the most difficult aspects. And one of the most boring. Hello, if you want realism, just go out the door. The fun bits of cartography are the ones that map what can't be seen.

• On Exactitude in Science
• Map–territory relation
• Simulacra and Simulation

Change Log

2016-08-12

• Added elevations view path kml + post
• Added 3 column home page + post

2016-08-07

• Fixed bug that prevented 'Elevation View First Person' from working

2016-08-06

• Many readme updates throughout
• Sandbox folder with two new examples added

2016-08-05

• New document.title

2016-08-04

• Many updates to all the readme files and scripts

2016-08-02

• First commit
• Add Read Me

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