None of us on the team considered ourselves 3D artists, so we leaned on each other, the internet, and friends to help solve technical problems. Developers writing shaders can get by without deep knowledge of trigonometry and linear algebra, but a good understanding of these disciplines make 3D graphics development substantially easier. The primary tools used to render 3D objects on the web, WebGL and GLSL shaders, can be daunting. Instead, not knowing what we did not know, we decided to figure it out ourselves. If we had known precisely the globe we wanted to build, we’d have been foolish not to hire GlobeKit. Once we settled on a globe, we had to work out how to bring it to life. The sphere occupies approximately 17% of the total area of the map. (More than ¾ of the globe is either hidden on the reverse hemisphere or obscured by its curvature.) Lastly, as an interactive experience, spinning a globe is much more satisfying than scanning a map. Second, a globe more accurately portrays the relative size, shape, and orientation of countries and bodies of water, even though visibility of the entire world at a glance is easier with a map. First, using a sphere to display the earth takes up less than 20% of the screen area required to display the world in two dimensions. We decided on a globe-and felt it was a better option for three reasons. Despite the impending release, an executive (it was Patrick) posed to us: what would you build if you had the time to do it the way you wish you could? ![]() A week before launch, we had a nice animated map where the globe now sits but we didn’t love it. For our landing page, the goal of the globe was to capture our global scale and bring a visual metaphor to life. For this reason, it includes extra visual details like country borders. We designed our first version of the globe to communicate nuanced data about the amount of online, cross-border commerce happening between each country. It wasn’t a given that we’d build an interactive 3D globe on our landing page. Along the way, we evaluated existing tools, designed our own solution, solved four interesting technical challenges, and improved the way we collaborate. We set out to build a globe that inspires a sense of awe, invites people to explore, and conceals details for discovery. Despite expansion to 40 countries and payment processing from 195 countries, we grapple with the complexity of cross-border operations and expansion every day. We wanted to convey the interconnected nature of the internet economy and the global scale of our service, while acknowledging how much ground is yet to be covered. In WebGL, displaying a single triangle-like a globemaker’s gore-with no lights, textures, interactivity, or motion requires 50+ lines of code.įor the new, we built a 1:40 million-scale, interactive 3D model of the earth. And conjuring that magic doesn’t come without sweat. ![]() There are tools that render 3D objects on the web, but they’re considered sorcery by many. In some cases, it’s the entire world-and that digital world is animated and interactive. ![]() These are terrestrial globe gores reissued by Giuseppe di Rossi in 1615.Īs visual designers and software engineers, we’re modeling a piece of the world every time we build software.
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