[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.

[Tron]

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.

[AlexIlmen]

This is a very interesting project and a great idea.
Indeed, if there are two maps of the starry sky, north and south, then it turns out that people from the "northern hemisphere" are upside down, in relation to people from the "southern hemisphere". Moreover, the firmament rotates relative to the earth, and the center of rotation in the northern hemisphere, according to science, is the north star, and the center in the southern hemisphere, the southern cross. What does it mean. This means that either the earth is a rotating ball with and there are two points that lie on the axis of this rotation. Or the scientists are lying.
Let's do an experiment. People you trust will take video cameras, point them at the sky, and shoot all night in good weather.
This should be done simultaneously in the southern and northern hemispheres, the resulting result will either completely prove the correctness of science, or bring the liars to the surface.
Is anyone ready?

[existoid]

I'm excited to see this because the FET map version I'm most interested in is this monopole one.

Can you put a scale to it that matches south of the equator known distances?  I would love to see that, as the monopole maps I've seen never show actual scale distances, and I've always wanted to see so I can try to find someone to test it out (I have a co-worker who lives in Argentina, and I think I can convince him to do some traveling for me and measure....except there's no monopole map that shows me what it "should" be...).

tl;dr - this is exciting!  Can you make a scale for it and show it closer in?