[RayPlanusJohnson]

Hey, all!  My name is Ray and I love VR, bowling & science. I'm currently working on a Virtual Reality project that lets people fly around the Earth in its full glory... I think it would be awesome to give people a more visceral experience of what it's like to see our world from up there but I also want to make it as realist as possible.

I spent a few days working on this 3D model of the Earth and I think it's a good start. I'd love to get your feedback on how I could make this better. (Sorry about the bad camera, I lost my right hand recently and I'm still getting used to my left.. 

http://i.imgur.com/lkI6w33.mp4

Additionally, does anyone here have good references of accurate star maps I can use? I want to start working on the sky but I'm having a hard time finding resources in the forums... even better if it's a high-resolution image! 

Thanks so much guys and please be nice, this is my first VR project and I'm only 17.

[MetaTron]

No references to the star map but this model looks good.  I like the southern equidistant projection but cheers none the less.

[GreatATuin]

The star map will look different depending on your latitude, and include different stars. Two good sites with star maps are https://staratlas.com/ and https://www.heavens-above.com/ . You can check their accuracy by comparing the night sky at your location with the data they provide.

I wish you the best of luck in your project, but I don't see how you could make that work with a flat earth and account for the fact we see different stars at different latitudes. I'd be very curious to see the final result.

[RayPlanusJohnson]

The star map will look different depending on your latitude, and include different stars. Two good sites with star maps are https://staratlas.com/ and https://www.heavens-above.com/ . You can check their accuracy by comparing the night sky at your location with the data they provide.

I wish you the best of luck in your project, but I don't see how you could make that work with a flat earth and account for the fact we see different stars at different latitudes. I'd be very curious to see the final result.

Thanks for your feedback, this is great!

[Regicide]

From someone with a small amount of knowledge about 3d stuff, I would recommend using a cloudless map and then placing the clouds as a separate visual layer, as well as using diffuse/glossy/rough/bump maps. If your map uses terrain shading, you can do this fairly easily: for the glossy map, just use an image editing program to black out everything that isn't blue and then white out everything that is, etc. Find a fairly high res map, and spend some time doing manual painting. Happy to help with pbrs for free.