DataPlanet

Inspiration

My original inspiration was a Sebastian Lague video, where he created a unity game in which you could fly across an Earth that was built using real height datasets. One shower later, I had the idea to represent data onto a globe where people interacted with it. 8 months later, here we are.

What it does

It is a 3D data visualisation project where the user can look around the world and interact with datasets, specifically targetting poverty, air pollution (climate change) and species protection.

How we built it

We built the project with javascript, html, and css. The globe is operated through an openGL library called Globe GL.

Challenges we ran into

Whilst the library already existed, it was somewhat limited in its capabilities and our team had to spend the first day finding out how it worked. Attaining good datasets and using them was also a challenge, along with the fact that none of our team had much experience coding javascript beforehand.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of the final product and whilst there are improvements to be made, our team is a set of university first years and this was accomplished in two days.

What we learned

As project lead, I learnt lots about git version control and teaching others how to use the system, general leading of hackathon projects. Learnt about using APIs and javascript syntax, response css and project development.

What's next for DataPlanet

Perhaps more interactivity, and the long term goal of pushing this into an educational game-type system where you can display data over its respective countries, flying above them and getting a feel for the world.