Comment by yoan9224

The time-based zoom interaction is clever - slowing down time as you zoom in makes the data feel more tangible. I've been working on a similar real-time globe visualization and learned a few things the hard way:

1. Throttling updates is critical. We went from per-event updates to 5-10 second batches and cut our WebSocket costs by 90%+ while the UX barely changed.

2. For the "ships crossing land" artifacts people are noticing - interpolating between sparse data points on a Mercator projection will always create these. On a globe (orthographic), great circle interpolation looks correct, but on flat maps you need to detect ocean crossings and handle them specially.

3. The biggest perf win was hybrid rendering: static heatmap for historical data + WebGL particles only for "live" movement. Trying to animate everything kills mobile.

Would love to see this with more recent data. The 2012 snapshot is fascinating but comparing pre/post-Suez blockage or COVID disruptions would be incredible.