
Folding Paper Globes - BerislavLopac
https://mapscaping.com/pages/folding-paper-globes
======
hrktb
One of the most interesting thing with paper globes is that the object becomes
very familiar with kids.

They understand it's inexpensive, won't shatter if they drop it so don't fear
touching or moving it around, playing with it. They can participate in making,
so it becomes more personal. And as there's no stand, it's easy to mess with
the orientation. "upside-down" becomes arbitrary, even with text on it, you
can discuss inclination, or how it can be seen from completely different
perspectives.

It's a very nice object to have around.

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rgovostes
I used to make these with a Photoshop plugin called Flexify and high-res
imagery available from NASA. I'm surprised that it's still around, and not
particularly expensive:
[http://www.flamingpear.com/flexify-2.html](http://www.flamingpear.com/flexify-2.html)

~~~
lloydb
I wrote Flexify. It’s got tons of weird paper-model possibilities like
sphericons and curved-fold origami. The whole list is here:
[http://www.flamingpear.com/flexify-output-
modes.html](http://www.flamingpear.com/flexify-output-modes.html)

~~~
rgovostes
It's great! I e-mailed you asking about a standalone version. All of your
plug-ins are pretty cool. As a kid it was fun to play with them, especially
LunarCell and Glitterato, and get results that far exceeded my own artistic
abilities. You were really ahead of the curve on procedural generation.

You also once sent me the source code for Despair when I asked about updating
it for then-modern systems, but I had no idea anything about C back then.

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dmix
No example photos of the completed globes?

Edit: found some examples on their blog: [https://mapscaping.com/blogs/geo-
candy/diy-folding-paper-glo...](https://mapscaping.com/blogs/geo-candy/diy-
folding-paper-globe)

~~~
tobr
What kind of shape does the second-to-last one make?

~~~
ClashTheBunny
A spike ball:
[http://www.flamingpear.com/gallery65.html](http://www.flamingpear.com/gallery65.html)

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probablybroken
The cubic earth made me laugh; I'm currently making a planetary terrain
generator which uses a normalised cube to generate spherical terrain, so this
was particularly close to home :)

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pacaro
The dymaxion projection works well for this too

~~~
quickthrower2
And the Waterman Butterfly

[https://xkcd.com/977/](https://xkcd.com/977/)

~~~
djhn
Is there any code or published algorithm out there to transform a map into
either of these?

~~~
ClashTheBunny
D3 does this amazingly well: [https://github.com/d3/d3-geo-
projection/blob/master/README.m...](https://github.com/d3/d3-geo-
projection/blob/master/README.md#geoPolyhedralWaterman)

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madhadron
Am I the only one that would love to have an eInk globe that I can project
arbitrary stuff on?

~~~
jcoffland
It's not eInk but a spherical screen already exists:
[https://pufferfishdisplays.com/solution/puffersphere/](https://pufferfishdisplays.com/solution/puffersphere/)

~~~
huhtenberg
[https://vimeo.com/212582845](https://vimeo.com/212582845) \- a skippable
version of their video. It's all animated, no real world footage.

Lots and lots of "real" videos of this display are marketing CGI renders, but
here's the one from the actual trade show -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGPvfHI-
yCE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGPvfHI-yCE)

~~~
paxswill
My university had one in the science building and I played with it a bit. It
was able to view various visualizations of data covering the globe
(temperature I think might've been one, but I'm near positive weather was also
available). They also had imagery of other planets loaded up, so you could
spin Mars around to look at different spots.

It's not a very bright display; it is just a projector after all. That video
plays pretty well to its strengths in a darker trade show, but in a bright
atrium it's much harder to use. It's a little hard to describe, but the
"viewing angle" isn't fantastic either. The surface is harder to see than I
expected as it gets closer to being perpendicular to your eyes (yeah,
obviously, but it seems to lose contrast/brightness or something).

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marapuru
Cool, just a little heads up that the print saying "Copyright © MapScaping.com
-all rights reserrved - not for sale" contains a spelling error.

Unless you are a pirate, sailing the foldable paper globes, reserved is
spelled with 1 r :-)

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wailashi
This reminded me of another paper globe project, Le Paper Globe:
[http://joachimesque.com/globe/](http://joachimesque.com/globe/)

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mncharity
For other planets/moons, there's also [1].

[1] Planetary Icosahedrons
[http://solarviews.com/eng/ico.htm](http://solarviews.com/eng/ico.htm)

