Creating a beautiful globe

[Sleep Paralysis]

Hi all,
I hope I am in the correct area for asking this.

I am a programmer, IOS designer to be more specific. I am hoping to find or create .mbtiles of a beautiful map of the earth. I have downloaded tilemil and while it can create .mbtiles drawing said man seems very complicated. Where as, mapbox draws the map i want very esily, but it cannot exxport.

I was hoping that someone could suggest to me other software I could easily get those task down in.

Thank you

[johnvanvliet]

what exactly do you need tiles for

1)
well you can start with using GDAL
http://www.gdal.org/
2)
-- maybe?
i have a bash script that uses the VIPs image library to cut up a BIG ( 12+ gig ) images into tiles
( 512x512 . but could be any power of 2 size) but outputs to a specific naming convention

and a older script that outputs to 1.png,2.png,3.png... and so on



and what dataset for the earth are you using
the OLD !!! bluemarble 2002
http://mirrors.arsc.edu/nasa/Blue_Marble_2002/

the newer bluemarble 2 ( aka 2012)
http://mirrors.arsc.edu/nasa/
all 12 months at 500M resolution
http://mirrors.arsc.edu/nasa/world_500m/

now do you need height data
there is a above the oceans set here
"srtm_ramp2.world.86400x43200.bin.gz"
( 16 bit MSB signed raw image )
http://mirrors.arsc.edu/nasa/topogra...0x43200.bin.gz

and i have a updated earth height on my google drive
it is a merge of a few new scientific accurate datasets
--
65536x32768 px. Earth topo map (RAW 16 bit short)

[Sleep Paralysis]

Hi, I am using WhirlyGlobe, a program which allows me to have a globe in my app. the "skin" of the globe is a .MBTile file.
If you look at the image i uploaded in dropbox ( because I dont have enough post to upload an image apprantly)
You see a globe, and the image being used is the Geograpgy-Class.mbtile file. I Want to do the same thing but have it a bit more custom with a much nicer map

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bod9r4sgiy...globe.png?dl=0


Edit: For some reason when ever i try to open the nasa 2012 links my browser crashes

[johnvanvliet]

on the jpg's and png's in the ARSC mirror
http://mirrors.arsc.edu/nasa/world_500m/
world.200401.3x21600x21600.A1.jpg
8 of these make up the map ( A1,A2,B1,B2,C1,C2,D1,D2) and each is a image that is 21600x21600 pixels on a side

odd that your browser would crash

are you trying to open
world.200401.3x21600x21600.A1.jpg 43 MEG
world.200401.3x21600x21600.A1.png 170 MEG
on your cell phone ????
the file size is listed in the right column , it is just a html view of the ftp page


my very old ( other) 14 year old desktop ( 1 gig ram) opens the png's and jpg's just fine
-- the computer regulated to the web and openoffice

From the post i thought what you wanted was to cut a BIG image into smaller ones that are easier for a graphics card to handle
BUT
that is NOT the case

as to "WhirlyGlobe"
https://github.com/mousebird/WhirlyGlobe


i do not use apple so
from READING the code

there is a tool in the src for chopping images
https://github.com/mousebird/WhirlyG...c/ImageChopper

as to making a new globe
have you gone through the tutorial
http://mousebird.github.io/WhirlyGlo...rst_globe.html

then the second tutorial
making a mbtile
http://mousebird.github.io/WhirlyGlo...age_layer.html
and
http://mousebird.github.io/WhirlyGlo...age_layer.html


From reading the code and looking at the Building tutorial on the web site
http://mousebird.github.io/WhirlyGlo...g_started.html

the mbtiles look to be SQL-light database files and not photos

they look to be basically a GIS database layer and not images






for something easer
there is XPlanet
http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xplanet/?source=navbar

and for apple
http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/OSX.php

[Sleep Paralysis]

Hi again, I have no idea why its crashing my browser on my pc but it is. very new lenovo. grr
Concerning the globe i have tghat, all i need is to skin it. so you are saying .MBTiles are just a bunch of chopped images?

[johnvanvliet]

.MBTiles are just a bunch of chopped images?

NO

they look to be DATABASE xml /json type files
pointing to the images on a WEB SITE

please fallow the tutorial on the website
http://mousebird.github.io/WhirlyGlo...age_layer.html
you have to CODE the "*.MBtiles" -- they are software and not a photo

the first tutorial is called
" Hello Earth" -- in reference to all the "hello world" c,c++ code

[Hai-Etlik]

MBTiles is an SQLite file that contains a pyramid of rendered PNG or JFIF/JPEG image tiles. So yes it is just a bunch of "chopped" images, at several different resolutions, stored inside a particular file format in a particular way.

MBTiles seems like a poor choice to use for skinning a 3D globe as MBTiles requires the use of the Spherical Mercator projection which can't cover the poles. MapBox created the MBTiles format for their specific use case, which is simple web maps which line up with all the other lightweight web maps and so use the same projection, zoom levels, and tile scheme as Google Maps.

[mousebird]

Hi, I make WhirlyGlobe-Maply. This thread turned up in my site's referral list.

Anyway, you seem to have covered the documentation thing quite well. I have nothing to add there.

I did want to pile on spherical mercator, though. I hate tiling data in web mercator on a globe. Alas, that's what the nicest (free) tools support. Round about the 10th time I tried to explain how to do it correctly, I just gave in. So there are end caps on the globe and most people tile spherical mercator. It works.... fine.

Under the hood, the toolkit uses Proj-4 and does an explicit reprojection and sampling into display space. It can even support a proper ellipsoid when doing elevation data. Only a handful of people use that or even know what a projection is.

But hey, that's the price of geo getting popular. Can't complain.

-Steve Gifford
(mousebird consulting inc)