Design-a-globe

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Published 2014-02-08
Credit to USGS for projections of celestial bodies.
"Ding" sound (when scan complete) from SoundFXNow.com
After the previous rotatable shaded globe project (of which this is a remix), a couple of people asked if it might be possible to draw a globe with surface detail.
Of course, you can work out anything with the right maths, but the question is whether it can be rendered quickly enough to make it reasonably interactive.
The answer, it appears, is that it's not too bad (at resolution 2) if this is all it has to do - of course, it's nowhere near fast enough to be used as part of a game within the 3D framework, and highest resolution is a bit too much.
Pity :(

One thing I really should add to this is some kind of warning when you hit the "replace all globes" button after you've done a scan - I can see someone somewhere losing all their scanned globes 'cos they hit that by accident... :(