What is 3D Globe?

This tool renders an interactive Earth you can rotate, zoom, and explore using Three.js and WebGL. Search a city, drop custom markers anywhere, and measure the great-circle distance between them. Everything runs locally on your device.

The globe is a WebGL sphere textured with NASA's Blue Marble imagery. Drag to spin it, scroll to zoom from continent down to city level, and click any city in the dropdown to fly the camera there. One-click landmark buttons jump straight to the Eiffel Tower, Everest, Machu Picchu and other famous spots. Markers stay anchored to latitude and longitude as you rotate, glowing arcs connect them in order, and the total great-circle path distance is shown in km and miles. Save the current view as a PNG screenshot, or copy a share link that restores the full marker set for anyone who opens it.

How to use

1. Click and drag to rotate the globe, scroll to zoom in and out
2. Click anywhere on the globe to drop a marker labelled with that spot's latitude and longitude, or use the search to jump straight to a city
3. Add custom markers by entering coordinates or clicking on the globe surface

When to use

• Plotting the stops of a multi-country trip to share with friends or co-travellers.
• Building a quick visual for geography class showing capital cities or biomes.
• Sketching a logistics map of warehouse or distributor locations for a meeting.

Result

You're planning a round-the-world trip and want to visualize your route. Search for each destination city, drop markers on Tokyo, Sydney, Cape Town, and Rio de Janeiro, then rotate the globe to see your complete journey path.

FAQ

Where do the coordinates and city names come from?

Search runs against a bundled list of 92 capitals and major world cities, each with name variants in several languages, plus 12 one-click landmark buttons. Custom markers accept any latitude and longitude pair you type in, so you can drop a pin on a village that isn't in the list.

Does it work without internet after the page loads?

Mostly. The city list, the 3D engine and your markers all sit on your device, but the Earth imagery — Blue Marble, topography and night lights — is fetched from a public CDN the first time the globe is drawn. Once those files are cached you can switch to airplane mode and the globe still spins, accepts new markers and measures distances.

Why does the globe look flat at high zoom levels?

The texture map is around 4K resolution, so when you zoom past the level of an individual country it starts to pixelate. The geometry stays a sphere, but the imagery cannot match a satellite map for street-level detail.

How do I add a place that isn't in the search list?

Open the marker panel and type a latitude (positive north, negative south) and longitude (positive east, negative west). For example, Aleppo is roughly 36.20, 37.16. The marker drops on the surface and you can label it.

Can I share the globe view with someone else?

Two ways. The Screenshot button saves the globe exactly as you see it; the PNG is the size of the globe view, so switch to fullscreen first if you want a bigger image. The Share link button copies a URL that encodes every marker and label — whoever opens it lands on the same globe with the same pins already in place, ready to fly between them.

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