Company
Date Published
Author
Stephen Blum
Word count
1467
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

PubNub has created a real-time data visualization using WebGL to enhance their understanding of the millions of requests they receive daily, transforming their previous 2D canvas into a 3D representation on a spherical globe. This advanced visualization, inspired by the Google Data Arts Team, is displayed on their office TV to showcase their global scale and is accessible through a live demo. WebGL, by bringing the power of OpenGL to JavaScript in the browser, allows for hardware-accelerated 3D scenes and is seamlessly integrated with cloud services using protocols like AJAX, WebSockets, or WebRTC. At PubNub, real-time geostatic data, including latitude and longitude coordinates, is published on a channel, enabling users to interactively control the 3D scene through mouse actions such as panning and zooming. This project, influenced by examples from three.js and Chrome Experiments, demonstrates the potential of combining WebGL with real-time data to create sophisticated visualizations and applications.