Day 66. Disco Earth 🪩
Sometimes a serious dataset is a good excuse for something playful, especially when the goal is material and motion rather than reference mapping.
Built for #30DayMapChallenge 2023 (Day 11: Retro), this version takes real ETOPO1 relief and pushes it into a deliberately dated mirror-ball aesthetic.
For Day 66, ETOPO1 becomes an equirectangular environment map driving both the background and reflections in a disco-style Earth built with Three.js and WebGL. A dense sphere provides positions and normals, with each vertex hosting a small mirror quad aligned to its normal. Using an InstancedMesh and a reflective MeshBasicMaterial, the surface samples the same texture as the environment, so geography still shapes the visual outcome while the planet reads as a field of reflective tiles.
A faint inner shell, minimal lighting, and two slow rotations layered together keep the depth and sparkle readable without adding unnecessary animation complexity.
This remains a style study grounded in real terrain data, not an analytical map, but it explores how far material and lighting can carry spatial perception.
Inspiration: Ksenia Kondrashova 🩵
Live demo: Disco Earth
The project
| Piece | Role |
|---|---|
| Data | NOAA ETOPO1 as equirectangular environment |
| Tech | InstancedMesh mirror quads + MeshBasicMaterial |
| Motion | Two slow layered rotations |
| Inspired by | Ksenia Kondrashova |
| Note | Style study, not analytical map |
How to follow
- Blog: blog.maptheclouds.com
- LinkedIn: Day 66 post
- Live demo: Disco Earth
- Hashtag: #100DayMapChallenge
#100DayMapChallenge · Day 66/100 · LinkedIn
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