Always interesting to see almost the exact same visualization independently appear and reappear over the decades.<p>This is really similar to a standard teaching visualization back in the late 90's-early 2000's (complete with stereo glasses). It was in turn sourced from mid-90's era SGI visualizations. I'm pretty sure it's older than that, as there are similar figures in a few papers and textbooks from the 80's, but I started doing all of this (i.e. visualizing geophysical data) in the early 2000's, so that's as far back as I really know.<p>I'm pretty sure I have a vrml or openinventor file of a near identical visualization around somewhere... Country outlines and all, with an optional "inner globe" so that you didn't see through to the other side. It used to be a standard demo that came with one of the stereo-capable VRML viewers that was commonly used in "geowall" setups. (Immersaview, maybe?)<p>Here we go... Things like this: <a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/aspale/writing/immersaview-documentation/readme.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.evl.uic.edu/aspale/writing/immersaview-documenta...</a> and specifically <a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/aspale/writing/immersaview-documentation/quakesGlobe.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www.evl.uic.edu/aspale/writing/immersaview-documenta...</a> (Side-by-side view is for dual-screen stereographic 3D setups - usually two projectors with different polarization filters focused so they overlapped. Obviously the webpage is static, but it gives a sense of what the desktop-based interactive visualization was like.)