
WebGL Realistic Earth with Carl Sagan quote - insider03
http://earth.plus360degrees.com/
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biot
This quote is great, but the visual ruins the context of a pale blue dot. From
[0], the reference was to the Voyager probe taking an image of the Earth from
near the edge of the solar system and the Earth appears as a dot less than a
pixel in size.

From that perspective, seeing majestic images of the Earth larger than life
and in your face is contrary to what Sagan was saying. With the outstanding
visuals in this demo, one might get the sense of a majestic world full of
opportunity, worthy of building armies to conquer and spill blood for each
chunk of land; the very antithesis of his point of how tiny and insignificant
our world and the people on it are.

The real pale blue dot:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Pale_Blu...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Pale_Blue_Dot.png)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot)

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j_m_b
Why not use the Carl Sagan Audio? Here it is without any music:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K05xxeCdhSo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K05xxeCdhSo)

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ElijahLynn
Maybe because they don't know what the Fair Use Act is.

[http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html](http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html)

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BuschnicK
Nice. I did a similar rendering about a year ago: [http://operation-
survival.appspot.com/html/index.html](http://operation-
survival.appspot.com/html/index.html)

With a bit of technical details and ideas of where the project is headed here:
[http://blog.buschnick.net/2014/02/webgl-
earth.html](http://blog.buschnick.net/2014/02/webgl-earth.html)

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mmastrac
That was great. I would have loved to have watched with a virtual Sagan
narrating -- I heard his voice in my head the whole time.

The lightning on the dark side of Earth was a neat effect. Might want to
consider flickering it randomly rather than flashing it to make it feel a
little more realistic.

Well done.

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WA
Should've used one of these as background music :)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc)

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insider03
These would have totally rocked!

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seanalltogether
Nice work, I've been putting together something like this as well in my spare
time, been trying to nail down the right shaders to handle the atmospheric
glow as well as morphing cloud layers as they move. Trying to see how possible
it is to come close to this effect
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybh11kcDhfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybh11kcDhfM)

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Ciantic
It's nice. However text is too small. They should try to mimick TV font sizes,
that is huge so one can read them without focusing on the text.

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ElijahLynn
Doesn't work on Ubuntu 14.04 in 64-bit Chrome 42.0.2311.90.

No JS errors in console either when clicking "begin".

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white-flame
It'd be nice if it to panned out in an approximation of the original pale blue
dot picture.

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cturhan
Great Job. I liked it. How did you add lightning effects? Is it procedurally
generated?

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malkia
Lovely! Very touching...

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tgreenhaw
You really should give attribution to Carl Sagan

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insider03
In the title of this post? I will edit it right now. I saw the attribution of
Carl Sagan in the credits of the project.

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coherentpony
This crashed my browser. Firefox 37.0.2.

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jheriko
those blue marble 2012 textures are still awesome.

webgl thing, okay for a mist shrouded sphere. technically worth approximately
nothing though... :)

