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Thursday, April 2, 2026dot-matrix-globe-build

Point cloud on a sphere: first render

d3-geoCanvasVisualization

Got the first render of a dot-matrix globe tonight. Parsed Natural Earth TopoJSON coastlines, generated point distributions inside landmass polygons using Poisson disc sampling, then projected lat/lng onto a sphere with d3's orthographic projection. The tricky part was dot density — too few points and continents look sparse, too many and it's just a solid blob. Poisson disc sampling with a minimum spacing parameter solved it. Rendering ~8,000 dots per frame on Canvas 2D, rotating smoothly. Looks like a wireframe Earth made of static noise. I like it.

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Andrew Voirol

Builder, hacker, shipper. Currently leaving localhost.

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