Globe

Also called interactive globe, 3D globe, dotted globe, or rotating earth

A 3D Earth drawn in dots that turns on its own and can be dragged, with markers and arcs for cities, offices, or network routes.

Globe explained

An interactive globe draws the Earth as a sphere of dots that slowly turns. Markers and glowing arcs show places and the links between them: offices, customers, data centers, or the path a request takes. People can usually grab it and spin it.

You can build one without a 3D library. Start from a list of land points, sampled from a world map mask on an even grid, and project each with an orthographic projection: rotate it by the current spin and tilt, keep the points that face the viewer (z > 0), and draw them on a <canvas>. Fading dots toward the rim sells the roundness. WebGL libraries such as cobe and globe.gl help when you need tens of thousands of points or real lighting.

Arcs between two cities follow the great circle between them and lift off the surface in the middle, so they stay visible as they cross the rim. Keep the spin slow, about 10 to 20° per second, pause the loop off screen, and stop the automatic spin under prefers-reduced-motion. Screen readers see a canvas as one image, so give it role="img" and a label, or list the locations in text.

Often confused with

Dotted map
A dotted map lays the world out flat and stays still. A globe wraps the dots around a sphere that turns.
All terms

Icon cloud

A 3D sphere of icons that turns on its own and can be dragged, with front icons large and solid and back icons small and faded.

Animated beam

Curved lines that connect icons, with a glowing pulse traveling along each one to show data moving from apps into a hub and on to a user.

Drag gesture

Moving an element by pressing on it and sliding the pointer or finger, usually within set bounds and with a glide after release.

Momentum

The glide an element keeps after a throw or flick, slowing down gradually like an object sliding across a smooth table.

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