Accurate Geolocation in Away3D

I built a globe in Away3D recently, and needed to mark on a few countries. It didn't have to be that accurate, but I figured that if I'm going to spend time putting points on it, they might as well be spot-on.

It was actually pretty straightforward to do, and turned out really nicely:

This example works using manually typed latitude and longitude, but it would be pretty simple to hook up an API that would let us edit the points, Google Maps might even do it.

Once we've got our latitude and longitude, the only other thing we need is an accurate map. I made this texture in Photoshop, but ensured that the map I worked off was designed to be wrapped around a globe. When it's laid flat, it actually looks very weird and warped (Antarctica looks massive, for example), but this is to allow for it 'pinching' at the top and bottom when the texture is applied. Obviously the map needs to be set exactly right in terms of placement too, I could tell mine was correct because the UK (i.e. the GMT timezone) was in the exact center:

Each country is then added to an array. I got these manually online, so they're far more accurate than I really need them, but it doesn't really make any difference:

locations.push(["Turkey", 38.963745, 35.243322]);

Once we have the locations, there's some scary-looking math that will convert the latitude and longitude into radians, in three dimensions. Initially I thought that maybe it was just three straightforward trig calculations, but it's actually a little more involved:

var phi:Number = (90 - locations[i][1]) * Math.PI/180;

var theta:Number = (locations[i][2] + 180) * Math.PI/180;

marker.x = (earthRadius + 15) * Math.sin(phi) * Math.cos(theta); 

marker.z = (earthRadius + 15) * Math.sin(phi) * Math.sin(theta);

marker.y = (earthRadius + 15) * Math.cos(phi);
           
(This is a bit of a step up from 2D trigonometry, and I definitely want to get my head around it.)

Anyway, that's the markers placed correctly in 3D space, but we still need them to point 'inwards', towards the center of the globe. We could work this out in the same sort of way as the placement calculation, but Away3D makes it a bit easier by letting us tell each marker to 'look' (orient) itself towards a given point. This is a simple example, so everything orients itself to the center of the space, at 0,0,0:

marker.lookAt(new Number3D(0, 0, 0));

marker.pitch(90);

And that's it, accurate markers on an Away3D globe.

EDIT: Had a couple of people asking for the source, so here's a really basic version to check out. The texture is a free one that I downloaded here.

geolocation.zip [3.2mb]