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vasturiano / three-globe

WebGL Globe Data Visualization as a ThreeJS reusable 3D object
https://vasturiano.github.io/three-globe/example/links/
MIT License
1.22k stars 147 forks source link

Possible to use tile maps? #14

Open riccardolardi opened 4 years ago

riccardolardi commented 4 years ago

Is it possible to use it with loading on demand tile maps such as openstreetmaps or google maps?

vasturiano commented 4 years ago

@riccardolardi thanks for reaching out.

No, there's currently no support for a tiling engine. It is a great suggestion though! Theoretically it could be done with a custom layer. But one would need to implement the functionality of loading the tile images from a server and rendering them on the appropriate location on the globe, and this would need to be tied in with camera motion interactions.

From a conceptual point of view this component developed out of the intention of representing macro geographical patterns that affect the whole globe and not just a zoomed small portion of it, which is what a tile engine is great for. For zoomed in views, potentially a more traditional geo projection (say Mercator) may be more appropriate than the orthographic one.