A 3D Mountain Map of the Earth

This webpage has been created as a simple demonstration of how a global interactive 3D map of Earth mountains, adhering to the time-proven rules of cartographic design, may be built with open-source technology and freely available data.

Simply browse the mountain map with a WebGL-enabled browser.

Alernatively, here is a tour of some interesting locations, which might serve as your starting point:

• San Diego County (southern California), looking north-west

• San Jacinto Peak (southern California), looking south-east

• Mount Whitney (central California), bird’s eye view from north-east

• The North Cascades (Washington State)

• Isanotski and Shishaldin volcanoes (Aleutian Islands, Alaska)

• Summit view from Mont Blanc (France/Italy/Switzerland), looking east

• Matterhorn (Switzerland)

• The Wetterstein mountain range (Germany/Austria)

• Loferer und Leoganger Steinberge (Austria)

• The Alps from the North

• Krkonoše Mountain Range (Czech Republic/Poland) from the south

• Mount Narodnaya, Nether-polar Ural mountains (Russia)

• Nanga Parbat, Gilgit Baltistan (Pakistan)

• Ngorongoro Highlands (Tanzania), looking west

• Table Mountain National Park (South Africa)

How Was the Map Created?

The map was built using vts-geospatial, an open-source 3D geospatial software stack designed and developed by Melown Technologies SE.

The complete source code of this project (and of this website) is available in an accompanying GitHub repository, and you are welcome to play with it and use as inspiration for your own 3D mapping projects. Simple instructions on how to recreate the map are available in the repository’s README.

The FOSS4G and NACIS 2019 talks

This website has been created to accompany my talk 3D Cartography (with vts-geospatial) held at FOSS4G in Bucharest in August 2019, and a largely similar talk Visual Hierarchies in Interactive Web-based 3D Mapping held at NACIS meeting in Tacoma in October 2019. An earlier version of the talk was held at FOSS4G-NA in San Diego in April of the same year.

In the talk, the map is created from scratch in a simple tutorial. Links to the configuration files and styles used in the tutorial are given below for a clear reference.

The view overlooking Mount Rainier to the north is used to demonstrate the state of the map after every step.

Step 1 - The Basemap

Code:

• new storage view definition

State of the map after this step.

Step 2 - The Ultra-prominent Peaks

Code:

• new geodata free layer in vts-mapproxy
• free layer stylesheet
• updated storage view with the new free layer

State of the map after this step.

Step 3 - Mountains and Settlements from OSM

Code:

• new free layer stylesheet
• updated storage view with the new free layer

State of the map after this step.

Step 4 - The Intellectual Hierarchy

Code:

• updated storage view
• updated osm free layer stylesheet
• updated ultra-prominent-peaks stylesheet

State of the map after this step.

Step 5 - The Visual Hierarchy

Code:

• updated storage view
• updated osm free layer stylesheet
• updated ultra-prominent-peaks stylesheet

State of the map after this step.

Desktop Version of the Map

You might also want to consider taking a look at the mountain map in vts-browser-cpp desktop. Though the whitewash and vertical-exaggeration techniques used in the mountain map are not yet fully reflected in the current version of vts-browser-cpp, the realistic physical atmosphere and enhanced navigation capabilities provide for a beautiful, almost Zen-like experience.

Legal Notice

Though all of the sources used in this map are freely available, license restrictions do apply. Check with the respective copyright holders, clearly marked in the bottom-right area of your map window:

You are free to use the information contained herein or in the accompanying GitHub repo map as a basis for your own 3D-mapping projects.

VTS Geospatial is ©2015-19 Melown Technologies SE.