This example shows how a 2D map in lat/long can be converted into a 3D globe.

Actually, my attempts to make digital 3D globes started many years ago - around 1996. At that time I was amazed by MicroStation 3D capabilities, and wanted to make something really cool. So I created a sphere, and covered the surface with an image representing the map of Saint Petersburg, Russia.




The globe was quite well received by my colleagues, and one local newspapers published an article about the globe and city planners having fun at work.

Now, 11 years later, I am in the globe making business again. This time with FME.

The main problem of making a globe with FME is lack of geocentric coordinate calculation - our Reprojector transformer does not have a geocentric projection yet. But there is an excellent web site MathWorld, which always can help if there is need in any help with math. The page about Spherical Coordinates gave me all the formulas, so I was able to make my first globe quickly and easily:



I wonder how our geography, cartography or geodesy would look like if those who made our planet also would make the same error in trigonometry and use a cosine instead of a sine in this simple formula:

My next globe also was not quite right - countries didn't want to stick properly to Earth, what made an interesting effect:



Eventually, I resolved all the problems and got the following globe :



The workspace takes a shapefile with very generalized country shapes, chops all the countries into separate points and calculates 3D coordinates for each point separately, rebuilds polygons in 3D, and extrudes them according to the extrusion vectors also calculated within the workspace.

If you have the latest Adobe Reader installed, you can enjoy my 3D Globe right now (see the attached globe.pdf) or when all 4 megabytes will be downloaded to your computer).

Check also another globe example.