Terraviz

macOS (Apple Silicon): the DMG isn't yet signed with an Apple Developer ID, so Gatekeeper will report it as "Terraviz is damaged and can't be opened" on first launch. The app is fine — see docs/MACOS_INSTALL.md for the one-line xattr workaround (or the System Settings equivalent). Signing is in progress.

A WebGL-based globe that streams environmental data from the Science On a Sphere project. Available as a web app and a native desktop application for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

🌍 Run your own node

Terraviz is built to be self-hosted. A museum, a lab or a school can run its own instance, publish its own datasets, and federate with others — the public site is one node, not the product.

Two ways in. They cover the same install — pick by where you are:

• The install console — a guided, resumable checklist in the browser. Filters itself to the kind of node you want, substitutes your values into every command, and prints a pre-flight sheet. Use this first, before you have cloned anything, to size the job up and collect the values you will need.
• docs/SELF_HOSTING.md — the canonical reference, and the one to work from once you have a checkout. It is the long form: every click path, every caveat, the troubleshooting table. Use this while you install. It travels with the repo, so it always matches the revision you are on.

The console links into the Markdown per phase, so moving from one to the other is a click. It is generated from the same modules npm run setup uses, which is what keeps its binding list and prerequisites honest.

Both start with a fork. Every step after the pre-flight sheet assumes your own copy of this repo: Phase 3 rewrites wrangler.toml with your resource IDs, and Cloudflare Pages builds from your remote. Cloning upstream directly fails late rather than early — nothing complains until you have IDs to push and nowhere to push them. §0.2 of the install guide covers the two ways to get one and what differs between them.

On a fork, the console link above serves upstream’s revision. Your checkout’s docs/SELF_HOSTING.md is the one that matches your code — and once you finish Phase 5, your own node serves its own /setup, generated from your checkout.

Tier
Viewer node	~30 min	Globe, upstream catalog, Orbit, telemetry. No publishing.
Publisher node	2–3 h	Your own datasets and tours, the publisher portal, semantic search, events, blog. The usual choice.
Publisher + desktop	+1 h	The above, plus branded desktop builds with your own update feed.

npm run setup -- --manual        # the prerequisites only a human can do
npm run setup -- --interactive   # guided, validated, resumable

✨ Features

• Searchable, filterable dataset browser with category and sub-category navigation, expandable cards, and thumbnails
• Interactive 3D globe with MapLibre GL JS (rotation, zoom, inertia on desktop and mobile, geographic labels, boundaries, 3D terrain)
• NASA GIBS tile-based Earth (Blue Marble day, Black Marble night lights with progressive zoom detail, specular highlights, sun lighting, real-time cloud overlay, atmosphere)
• Static image datasets with resolution fallback (4096/2048/1024) and download progress
• HLS video streaming via Vimeo proxy with adaptive bitrate, playback controls, and audio
• Time synchronization with ISO 8601 parsing and scrubber
• Orbit — an AI digital docent that answers questions, explains datasets, and loads them onto the globe by conversation (hybrid LLM + local keyword engine, configurable to any OpenAI-compatible provider)
• Multi-globe comparison — View 2 or 4 synchronised globes side-by-side, each showing a different dataset. Camera motion locks across panels; time-series animations sync by real-world date. Switch layouts from the Tools menu.
• Climate Futures tour — A built-in guided tour comparing SSP1/SSP2/SSP5 climate scenarios across air temperature, precipitation, sea surface temperature, and sea ice concentration using 1, 2, and 4-globe layouts.
• Collapsible browse panel (desktop sidebar with toggle)
• Accessible controls (ARIA labels, keyboard navigation)
• Frosted-glass UI design language (see STYLE_GUIDE.md)

Desktop App (Tauri)

The desktop app includes everything above, plus:

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗