The WebGL Globe is an open platform for geographic data visualization created by the Google Data Arts Team. We encourage you to copy the code, add your own data, and create your own globes.

Check out the examples here: http://www.chromeexperiments.com/globe

The WebGL Globe supports data in JSON format, a sample of which you can find here. dat.globe makes heavy use of the Three.js library, and is still in early open development.

Data Format

The following illustrates the JSON data format that the globe expects:

var data = [
  [
    'seriesA', [ latitude, longitude, magnitude, latitude, longitude, magnitude, ... ]
  ],
  [
    'seriesB', [ latitude, longitude, magnitude, latitude, longitude, magnitude, ... ]
  ]
];

Basic Usage

The following code polls a JSON file (formatted like the one above) for geo-data and adds it to an animated, interactive WebGL globe.

// Where to put the globe?
var container = document.getElementById( 'container' );

// Make the globe
var globe = new DAT.Globe( container );

// We're going to ask a file for the JSON data.
xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();

// Where do we get the data?
xhr.open( 'GET', 'myjson.json', true );

// What do we do when we have it?
xhr.onreadystatechange = function() {

  // If we've received the data
  if ( xhr.readyState === 4 && xhr.status === 200 ) {

      // Parse the JSON
      var data = JSON.parse( xhr.responseText );

      // Tell the globe about your JSON data
      for ( i = 0; i < data.length; i++ ) {
        globe.addData( data[i][1], 'magnitude', data[i][0] );
      }

      // Create the geometry
      globe.createPoints();

      // Begin animation
      globe.animate();

    }

  }

};

// Begin request
xhr.send( null );