A real-time interactive 3D digital twin of Earth, in your browser.
Live app: earthos.efolusi.com ·
EarthOS is not another globe viewer. It is a platform for visualizing real-world datasets on top of a realistic Earth in real time. Nine layers ship today: satellite imagery, satellites propagated with SGP4, live aircraft, hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, solar eclipses, day/night, and your own GeoJSON. Anything else you can express as a plugin.
Think Google Earth + NASA Eyes + FlightRadar24, as one modular, extensible, open-source codebase. Ships (AIS), wind and weather are not built yet; they are on the roadmap, and the plugin contract is exactly how they get built.
- Realistic globe: day/night shader with soft terminator, a twilight-lit night side with Black Marble city lights, clouds, atmospheric scattering rim, stars, true sun and moon positions.
- 100,000+ moving objects at 60 FPS: SGP4 propagation in a worker pool, transferable position/velocity buffers, GPU extrapolation in the vertex shader (clamped so orbits stay on-shell at extreme time rates), one draw call per layer.
- Everything is a plugin: each data source is an independently installable npm package with a small, stable contract (
plugin.ts,provider.ts,renderer.tsx,settings.ts,types.ts). - Time travel: a central simulation clock drives propagation, sun position, and every layer. Scrub past and future; orbits sweep smoothly.
- Tools on the globe: click-to-measure great-circle distance and spherical area, and a "My Location" panel that lists the satellites passing over you right now with elevation and compass bearing.
- Phone and tablet ready: the viewer, panels, timeline, and bars adapt to small and touch screens, not desktop only.
- SDK:
npm install earthosand compose your own Earth:
import { Earth, LayerSatellites, LayerEarthquakes } from 'earthos';
export default function App() {
return (
<Earth initialCamera={{ lat: 9.05, lon: 7.49, altKm: 12000 }}>
<LayerSatellites group="starlink" />
<LayerEarthquakes minMagnitude={4.5} />
</Earth>
);
}apps/web Flagship Next.js viewer app
packages/core Plugin runtime, engine, time, workers, stores
packages/globe Three.js / R3F globe renderer and points pipeline
packages/ui Panels, timeline, command palette, settings forms
packages/providers Data provider framework (caching, polling, rate limits)
packages/gis Geodesy, orbital transforms, spatial index
packages/testing Plugin contract test harness
packages/config Shared eslint / tsconfig / tsup / vitest presets
plugins/* One directory per data source
sdk/earthos The `earthos` npm package
sdk/create-earthos-plugin Plugin scaffolder
docs/ Architecture, plugin guide, rendering, performance, deployment, FAQ, ADRs
examples/ Minimal Next.js, Vite SPA, custom plugin
scripts/ Repo utilities: peer-dep check (pnpm check-peers), HD texture fetch
Requirements: Node >= 20, pnpm >= 10.
pnpm install
pnpm build # build all packages
pnpm dev # start the web app (apps/web) and package watchers
pnpm test # unit tests across the workspace
pnpm e2e # Playwright smoke testsOpen http://localhost:3000, toggle the Satellites layer, and watch the constellation move.
pnpm create earthos-plugin my-layerA plugin is four small modules composed by definePlugin:
import { definePlugin } from '@earthos/core';
import { settings } from './settings';
export default definePlugin({
id: 'my-layer',
apiVersion: 1,
meta: { name: 'My Layer', category: 'custom', attribution: 'Me' },
settings,
provider: () => import('./provider'), // data fetching + caching policy
renderer: () => import('./renderer'), // R3F component inside the host canvas
});Disabled plugins cost zero bytes: provider and renderer are dynamic-import split points loaded only when the layer is enabled. See docs/PLUGIN_GUIDE.md.
| Layer | Source | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Satellite imagery | Esri / EOX Sentinel-2 | streamed web-mercator quadtree, zoom for detail; twilight night side |
| Satellites | CelesTrak → TLE API | dense constellation shell (gold), SGP4 in workers, orbit lines, follow camera |
| Aircraft | airplanes.live / OpenSky | live ADS-B (cyan arrows), viewport-scoped, dead-reckoned between polls |
| Hurricanes | NOAA NHC | active cyclones, violet, intensity-scaled |
| Solar eclipse | astronomy-engine | umbra/penumbra on the simulation clock (try 2026-08-12 17:45 UTC) |
| Earthquakes | USGS | red, magnitude-scaled, depth-colored |
| Wildfires | NASA EONET | orange fire-heat points, colored by recency |
| Day / night | computed | terminator, subsolar and sublunar markers |
| Custom GeoJSON | your data or a URL | points, lines, polygon outlines; any FeatureCollection URL |
Each live layer has a distinct identity so nothing reads alike: gold satellite dots, cyan aircraft darts, red earthquakes, violet storms.
Want something concrete in the Custom GeoJSON layer? Paste https://earthos.efolusi.com/samples/kdmp-merah-putih-sample.geojson into its GeoJSON URL setting. That hosted sample dataset is 1,900 Indonesian village centroids (candidate Koperasi Desa/Kelurahan Merah Putih locations); provenance and reuse terms are in apps/web/public/samples/CREDITS.md.
Shareable permalinks encode camera, time, layers, and selection; ?embed serves a chrome-free iframe with a postMessage API. See ROADMAP.md for what's next (ships, wind, aurora, terrain, analytics).
See CONTRIBUTING.md. Plugin contributions are the primary extension surface; the roadmap lists data sources waiting for an owner.
MIT covers the EarthOS code. Earth textures carry their own terms and are credited in apps/web/public/textures/CREDITS.md: the HD set is Solar System Scope (CC BY 4.0), the base set is the three.js planet textures (NASA-derived, free to use). Data feeds carry their providers' terms (CelesTrak, USGS, and others are attributed per plugin). The shipped sample dataset at apps/web/public/samples/ is the most restrictive asset here: its geometry comes from Badan Informasi Geospasial (BIG), which declares no open-data licence on that service, so attribute BIG and confirm reuse terms with BIG before redistributing it beyond this demo. See apps/web/public/samples/CREDITS.md.