This article celebrates the tenth anniversary (2008–2018) of Myriahedral Projections, a set of map projections created by Jarke van Wijk that provide a unique set of features: unlike other map projections, Myriahedral Projections have no area or angle distortion. This is made possible by combining techniques of origami with map projection. By providing multiple cuts on a spherical mesh, we’re able to unfold the earth with little to no distortion on the plane at the expense of many interrupts.
Cuts (red) and folds (blue) for a map projection
Let’s explore what…
by Ib Green
The basic idea behind today’s by taking Uber’s most popular open source Visualization frameworks, and aligning their websites, documentation and examples, and providing links between the websites, we can make our various frameworks significantly easier to discover and use for both new and experienced users.
The Frameworks
The visualization frameworks that are part of our initial suite are:
- deck.gl — High performance WebGL powered layers for geospatial and infovis use cases.
- react-map-gl — React components for Mapbox GL (integrates seamlessly with deck.gl)
- react-vis — An extensive set of React charting components.
- luma.gl — WebGL2 components powering deck.gl
Why Develop a Framework Suite?
While each…
by Ib Green
In many ways v4.0 is the biggest luma.gl release to date. It is a major upgrade that brings full WebGL2 support to luma.gl, as well as adding advanced features such as GL state management and a shader module system.
Major Updates
- New Documentation
- Full WebGL2 Support with WebGL Capability Management
- WebGL State Management
- GLSL Module System
- Seer Debug Integration
New Documentation
Before even going into the wealth of new features in luma.gl v4, the documentation has been completely rewritten
- New documentation site, aligned with other frameworks in the same visualization suite, such as deck.gl, react-map-gl and react-vis.
- Extensive overhaul of documentation…
A few weeks ago I set on trying out new WebGL 2.0 features with deck.gl. WebGL 2.0 brings plenty of new goodies to be used for game development, creative coding and data visualization like instancing, floating-point textures, transform feedback, multiple render targets, and more. With this in mind, and inspired by the work of Cameron Beccario, Viegas and Wattenberg, and NASA, I created a WebGL 2.0 wind map demo using deck.gl.
This interactive demo enables you to change the map’s perspective by using cmd + drag; toggle between vector field and particle layers on the left…
by Xiaoji Chen
While working on deck.gl v4, I decided to have some fun and built a Minecraft Chunk Viewer in the browser. Drag in a region file from your own world and explore the world in depth! Totally not cheating.
- Region files are in your Minecraft’s save folder with names like r.12.34.mca. Check this page to see where to find them.
- Drag to rotate; drag while holding shift to pan
- Use the slider to slice the world
- Hover over a block to see details
- Click on the minimap to select other chunks; click while holding shift to select multiple…
by Ib Green
We’ve just released a new major version of deck.gl, so this is a good time to share some information about the improvements that went into the new version the rationale behind them, and provide some hints on our thoughts about the future of deck.gl.
What Motivated the Release?
When we did our first external announcement of deck.gl in November 2016 (announcing the deck.gl v3 release), we also stated our intention to improve and expand deck.gl’s layer catalog in future releases. This is a major part of what we are doing now through the deck.gl v4 release.
deck.gl v3 saw rapid adoption…
vis.gl
Uber Visualization’s open-source frameworks. http://vis.gl/
