Globe Applet

The globe applet on the right is included in the NLVM as a tool for illustrating calculating Great Circle paths.

This application has a very long history, having started life in the 1960s. For a full account of this applet's history, please look at Colin's page and Tom's Java page, where I found the Globe applet (he and Tom were kind enough to have provided the full source code on their pages).

I made a number of modifications to the Globe applet code, namely:

• Added drawing of great circle path and "mercator straight line" paths when you click on two cities.
• Optimized some of the painting routines (I think :-)
• Draw a mercator map at the bottom using the same data set as the globe.

Anyone is welcome to use this version of the globe applet, provided that you abide by the following:

• Share your source with others freely.
• Let me know you're using it.
• Give me credit, and all the other pioneers, if you use the data or algorithms.

You may download the following:

• Globe applet java source code [47 KBytes].
• Globe applet compiled into class files java class files [61 KBytes].

The applet is fairly self-explanatory, just have a look at the source of this page to see how to implement it.

Cheers,
Joel Duffin.