SwiftGlobe

An interactive 3D globe in SceneKit for iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and MacOS X. Built in Swift 5 with XCode 11.4.

Requires iOS 11, tvOS 11, macOS 10.13 (High Sierra)

Features

• Targets for macOS, iOS, & tvOS
• Visual quality
  • mountains cast shadows (implemented with a normal map)
  • water is reflecty, land is matte (implemented with metalness & roughness maps)
  • detailed milkyway in the background
  • use high-quality earth texture on macOS (looks great on retina displays, even when zoomed in)
• Accurate modeling
  • earth's axis varies by the current day of the year (north pole gets more sun in the summer, less in the winter)
  • tilt the milkyway relative to the solar system's orbital plane
• Interactive
  • support pan & zoom gestures
  • support tvOS remote, too (pan & zoom)
  • glowing dots for markers

TODOs

In no particular order:

• Add AR target (for iPhone/iPad)
  • babystep: Add target, with automatic globe placement. (done but glitchy)
  • Add placement tracking & lock feedback
• Add Apple Watch support, using SwiftUI
  • use small textures
  • handle pan & crown-zoom events (nb: no pinch gesture on the watch!)
  • NB: integrating the globe into your own app will take a little work: e.g. the gesture & crown behavior must be handled in your InterfaceController
• show city lights on darkside (shader modifier)
• align globe up&down along the natural axis (or optionally along the day/night terminator instead)
• Use current day-of-year to compute accurate seasonal tilt
• add point-to-point connection visualization
• cubemap for earth texture (fix slight smearing at poles)
• fix normal map 'dimple' at the north pole
• add an orbiting moon
• support scrollwheel zoom on Mac
• Support new Apple TV 'Siri Remote' (introduced Oct 2015)
  • with touchpad & motion (see https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/techtalks-apple-tv/4/ )
  • or plain swipe gestures (UIPanGestureRecognizer)
• Support new Apple TV game controllers (new in tvOS 13.0, Sept 2019)
  • Sony DualShock

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details

Acknowledgments

• WWDC 2013 session 'What's new in SceneKit' (session, video, & demo source all very helpful)
• WWDC 2016 session 'Advances in SceneKit Rendering' (especially physically based materials)
• InfiniteRed's interactive seven-foot globe (built with SceneKit & physics)
• Milkyway Skymap
  • source image from European Southern Observatory (https://www.eso.org/public/usa/images/eso0932a/)
  • converted to cubemap (from equirectangular panorama) with a python script provided by Benjamin Dobell (http://stackoverflow.com/a/36976448/235229)
• Earth texture by Jim Hastings-Trew at planetpixelemporium.com