Question about dot-globe

[ak3zaidan]

Hello would you know how to add some sort of pin point marker to mark a location on the map, and then make the marker clickable? I want to create a snap maps clone where users can magnify the globe and see cities and display markers that can be clicked to show additional content. Is there a way to replace the earth node with a real globe instead of dots?

I also just wanted to say I love this repo

[DominicHolmes]

@ak3zaidan I'm not the contributor but I also found this repo a few hours ago. I need something similar for a small UI component.

I'm planning to try something similar in a fork - I need this library for a small UI component that reflects a user's choice of city. I need to animate rotational changes to the globe + add different colored dots at certain coordinates (for each location option) + add a pin for the selection. Sounds kind of similar to your use case, I'll let you know if it works out.

[ak3zaidan]

@DominicHolmes thanks I will also be working on this. My use case is basically what you want to achieve. Given a coordinate I want to add a dot or marker.

[ak3zaidan]

@DominicHolmes how did you add this repo to Xcode. When I try and fork it then add to Xcode it doesn't let me modify it. If I try to manually copy in the files the star background doesn't work (Xcode doesn't file asset even though I added it to my assets file)

[grandsir]

@ak3zaidan let me solve it for you

[grandsir]

For the first question, if you take out the dots from the globe the package loses its functionality. Main purpose of this library is to create somewhat "visual" representation of a data but not really "functional" one. Just like globe in stripe's & github's website. Github shows an arc between dots when a pr opens and stripe does it when a transaction happens.

If you want to create an interactive globe with this package, I've doubt this package will even be useful for you. but, I'm also working in a package called Interactive-Globe, which will be a combination of Dot-globe and my Interactive-Map repo.

Also, thanks for the positive feedback :)

[ak3zaidan]

@grandsir thanks for the input boss. I couldn't quite find a repo on your GitHub named Interactive-Globe. Im sorry if I misunderstood, Is this repo not intended to be public at the moment.

[DominicHolmes]

@ak3zaidan in general to edit packages, you can point your dependency at your fork, and then drag in the files to make it locally editable. See documentation here

Also, I misread the part about the dots, I agree that if you want a real map you'll want to find a different library

[DominicHolmes]

@grandsir I'm a bit stuck understanding your math in generateTextureMap(). In particular I think I'm misunderstanding these lines:

let xPixel = Int(u * floatWorldMapImageWidth)
let yPixel = Int(v * floatWorldMapImageHeight)

Since the image is 2048x1024, I would expect xPixel to be [0, 2048] and yPixel to be in [0,1024]. But xPixel is much higher than that -- is this a bug or am I misunderstanding these variables?

I've successfully re-implemented your dot placement code using other methods (golden spiral), but I like the look of the placement of the dots in your implementation better. Do you have any links to the math you're using / the name of the method?

[grandsir]

@grandsir thanks for the input boss. I couldn't quite find a repo on your GitHub named Interactive-Globe. Im sorry if I misunderstood, Is this repo not intended to be public at the moment.

@ak3zaidan it is not public yet. Due to school & company duties it'll be delayed a little bit. But i'll eventually release it at some point.

[grandsir]

I've successfully re-implemented your dot placement code using other methods (golden spiral), but I like the look of the placement of the dots in your implementation better. Do you have any links to the math you're using / the name of the method?

I use sunflower phyllotaxis for that.

[grandsir]

Since the image is 2048x1024, I would expect xPixel to be [0, 2048] and yPixel to be in [0,1024]. But xPixel is much higher than that -- is this a bug or am I misunderstanding these variables?

It's not a bug; rather, it's a somewhat unconventional approach I employed to display the dots on the screen. Because the coordinates are transformed into an SCNGeometrySource, the specific values of x and y become inconsequential, as they will ultimately be projected as different coordinates on the actual globe.

[ak3zaidan]

@grandsir anyway you could share it with me early and I could help with the project, Im pretty good with swift UI. I have my own app 'Hustles' that I want to integrate this sort of functionality into asap. Kind of my graduation capstone project, so Id appreciate it.

[ak3zaidan]

@DominicHolmes were you able to achieve or find such behavior?

[DominicHolmes]

Hey @ak3zaidan , I just pushed what I have to my fork. Keep in mind this code is super messy, unused commented-out code everywhere...

Here's a video

Not sure how much of this applies to your project. But what I did achieve, is figuring out how to relate CLLocationCoordinates to a point on the globe. I hardcoded the coordinates for New York, but basically there are some algorithms that:

• translate actual coordinates (CLLocationCoordinate2D) to sphere coordinates
• find the closest "dot" on the globe
• give that "dot" a different material (in the video below, red)

My plan was to expose a list of coordinates as a SwiftUI binding, and let users focus on each point (basically as a beautiful thing to live alongside my location picker).

What I didn't solve, and was having a lot of trouble with, was getting the camera to smoothly animate and center on a coordinate. I thought this would be easy, but I think I was running into "gimbal lock", which I don't fully understand.

I've moved onto other stuff but hopefully this is useful

[ak3zaidan]

@DominicHolmes thanks, would you possibly know how to add the dot as a button instead? I tried doing so but couldn't figure out.