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# Globe projection | ||
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This guide describes the inner workings of globe projection. | ||
Globe draws the same vector polygons and lines as mercator projection, | ||
ensuring a clear, unstretched image at all view angles and support for dynamic layers and geometry. | ||
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The actual projection is done in three steps: | ||
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- compute angular spherical coordinates from source web mercator tile data | ||
- convert spherical coordinates to a 3D vector - a point on the surface of a unit sphere | ||
- project the 3D vector using a common perspective projection matrix | ||
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So the globe is a unit sphere from the point of view of projection. | ||
This also simplifies a lot of math, and is used extensively in the globe transform class. | ||
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Geometry is projected to the sphere in the vertex shader. | ||
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## Zoom behavior | ||
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To stay consistent with web mercator maps, globe is automatically enlarged when map center is nearing the poles. | ||
This keeps the map center visually similar to a mercator map with the same x,y and zoom. | ||
However, when panning the globe or performing camera animations, | ||
we do not want the planet to get larger or smaller when changing latitudes. | ||
Map movement thus compensates for the planet size change by also | ||
changing zoom level along with latitude changes. | ||
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This behavior is completely automatic and transparent to the user. | ||
The only case when the user needs to be aware of this is when | ||
programmatically triggering animations such as `flyTo` and `easeTo` | ||
and using them to both change the map center's latitude and *at the same time* | ||
changing the map's zoom to an amount based on the map's starting zoom. | ||
The example [globe-zoom-planet-size-function](https://maplibre.org/maplibre-gl-js/docs/examples/globe-zoom-planet-size-function/) demonstrates how to | ||
compensate for planet size changes in this case. | ||
All other camera animations (that either specify target zoom | ||
that is not based on current zoom or do not specify zoom at all) will work as expected. | ||
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## Shaders | ||
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Most vertex shaders use the `projectTile` function, which | ||
accepts a 2D vector of coordinates inside the currently drawn tile, | ||
in range 0..EXTENT (8192), and returns its final projection that can | ||
be directly passed to `gl_Position`. | ||
When drawing a tile, proper uniforms must be set to convert from | ||
these tile-local coordinates to web mercator. | ||
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The implementation of `projectTile` is automatically injected into the shader source code. | ||
Different implementations can be injected, depending on the currently active projection. | ||
Thanks to this many shaders use the exact same code for both mercator and globe, | ||
although there are shaders that use `#ifdef GLOBE` for globe-specific code. | ||
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## Subdivision | ||
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If we were to draw mercator tiles with globe shaders directly, we would end up with a deformed sphere. | ||
This is due to how polygons and lines are triangulated in MapLibre - the earcut algorithm | ||
creates as few triangles as possible, which can sometimes result in huge triangles, for example in the oceans. | ||
This behavior is desirable in mercator maps, but if we were to project the vertices of such large triangles to globe directly, | ||
we would not get curved horizons, lines, etc. | ||
For this reason, before a tile is finished loading, its geometry (both polygons and lines) is further subdivided. | ||
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The figure below demonstrates how globe would look without subdivision. | ||
Note the deformed oceans, and the USA-Canada border that is not properly curved. | ||
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![](assets/no_subdivision.png) | ||
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It is critical that subdivision is as fast as possible, otherwise it would significantly slow down tile loading. | ||
Currently the fastest approach seems to be taking the output geometry from `earcut` and subdividing that further. | ||
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When modifying subdivision, beware that it is very prone to subtle errors, resulting in single-pixel seams. | ||
Subdivision should also split the geometry in consistent places, | ||
so that polygons and lines match up correctly when projected. | ||
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We use subdivision that results in a square grid, visible in the figure below. | ||
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![](assets/wireframe.png) | ||
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Subdivision is configured in the Projection object. | ||
Subdivision granularity is defined by the base tile granularity and minimal allowed granularity. | ||
The tile for zoom level 0 will have base granularity, tile for zoom 1 will have half that, etc., | ||
but never less than minimal granularity. | ||
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The maximal subdivision granularity of 128 for fill layers is enough to get nicely curved horizons, | ||
while also not generating too much new geometry and not overflowing the 16 bit vertex indices used throughout MapLibre. | ||
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Raster tiles in particular need a relative high base granularity, as otherwise they would exhibit | ||
visible warping and deformations when changing zoom levels. | ||
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## Floating point precision & transitioning to mercator | ||
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Shaders work with 32 bit floating point numbers (64 bit are possible on some platforms, but very slow). | ||
The 23 bits of mantissa and 1 sign bit can represent at most around 16 million values, | ||
but the circumference of the earth is roughly 40 000 km, which works out to | ||
about one float32 value per 2.5 meters, which is insufficient for a map. | ||
Thus if we were to use globe projection at all zoom levels, we would unsurprisingly encounter precision issues. | ||
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![](assets/floats.png) | ||
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To combat this, globe projection automatically switches to mercator projection around zoom level 12. | ||
This transition is smooth, animated and can only be noticed if you look very closely, | ||
because globe and mercator projections converge at high zoom levels, and around level 12 | ||
they are already very close. | ||
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The transition animation is implemented in the shader's projection function, | ||
and is controlled by a "globeness" parameter passed from the transform. | ||
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## GPU "atan" error correction | ||
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When implementing globe, we noticed that globe projection did not match mercator projection | ||
after the automatic transition described in previous section. | ||
This mismatch was very visible at certain latitudes, the globe map was shifted north/south by hundreds of meters, | ||
but at other latitudes the shift was much smaller. This behavior was also inconsistent - one would | ||
expect the shift to gradually increase or decrease with distance from equator, but that was not the case. | ||
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Eventually, we tracked this down to an issue in the projection shader, specifically the `atan` function. | ||
On some GPU vendors, the function is inaccurate in a way that matches the observed projection shifts. | ||
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To combat this, every second we draw a 1x1 pixel framebuffer and store the `atan` value | ||
for the current latitude, asynchronously download the pixel's value, compare it with `Math.atan` | ||
reference, and shift the globe projection matrix to compensate. | ||
This approach works, because the error is continuous and doesn't change too quickly with latitude. | ||
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This approach also has the advantage that it works regardless of the actual error of the `atan`, | ||
so MapLibre should work fine even if it runs on some new GPU in the future with different | ||
`atan` inaccuracies. | ||
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## Clipping | ||
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When drawing a planet, we need to somehow clip the geometry that is on its backfacing side. | ||
Since MapLibre uses the Z-buffer for optimizing transparency drawing, filling it with custom | ||
values, we cannot use it for this purpose. | ||
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Instead, we compute a plane that intersects the horizons, and for each vertex | ||
we compute the distance from this plane and store it in `gl_Position.z`. | ||
This forces the GPU's clipping hardware to clip geometry beyond the planet's horizon. | ||
This does not affect MapLibre's custom Z values, since they are set later using | ||
`glDepthRange`. | ||
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However this approach does not work on some phones due to what is likely a driver bug, | ||
which applies `glDepthRange` and clipping in the wrong order. | ||
So additionally, face culling is used for fill and raster layers | ||
(earcut does not result in consistent winding order, this is ensured during subdivision) | ||
and line layers (which have inconsistent winding order) discard beyond-horizon | ||
pixels in the fragment shader. | ||
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## Raster tiles | ||
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Drawing raster tiles under globe is somewhat more complex than under mercator, | ||
since under globe they are much more prone to having slight seams between tiles. | ||
Tile are drawn as subdivided meshes instead of simple quads, and the curvature | ||
near the edges can cause seams, especially in cases when two tiles of different | ||
zoom levels are next to each other. | ||
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To make sure that there are both no seams and that every pixel is covered by | ||
valid tile texture (as opposed to a stretched border of a neighboring tile), | ||
we first draw all tiles *without* border, marking all drawn pixels in stencil. | ||
Then, we draw all tiles *with* borders, but set stencil to discard all pixels | ||
that were drawn in the first pass. | ||
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This ensures that no pixel is drawn twice, and that the stretched borders | ||
are only drawn in regions between tiles. | ||
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## Symbols | ||
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Symbol rendering also had to be adapted for globe, as well as collision detection and placement. | ||
MapLibre computed well-fitting bounding boxes even for curved symbols under globe projection | ||
by computing the AABB from a projection of the symbol's box' corners and box edge midpoints. | ||
This is an approximation, but works well in practice. | ||
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## Transformations and unproject | ||
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Most projection and unproject functions from the transform interface are adapted for globe, | ||
with some caveats. | ||
The `setLocationAtPoint`function may sometimes not find a valid solution | ||
for the given parameters. | ||
Globe transform currently does not support constraining the map's center. | ||
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## Controls | ||
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Globe uses slightly different controls than mercator map. | ||
Panning, zooming, etc. is aware of the sphere and should work intuitively, | ||
as well as camera animations such as `flyTo` and `easeTo`. | ||
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Specifically, when zooming, the location under the cursor stays under the cursor, | ||
just like it does on a mercator map. | ||
However this behavior has some limitations on the globe. | ||
In some scenarios, such as zooming to the edge of the planet, | ||
this way of zooming would result in rapid and unpleasant map panning. | ||
Thus this behavior is slowly faded out at low zooms and replaced with an approximation. | ||
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There are also other edge cases, such as when looking at the planet's poles | ||
and trying to zoom in to a location that is on the other hemisphere ("behind the pole"). | ||
MapLibre does not support moving the camera across poles, so instead we need to rotate around. | ||
In this case, an approximation instead of exact zooming is used as well. | ||
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Globe controls also use panning inertia, just like mercator. | ||
Special care was taken to keep the movement speed of inertia consistent. |
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