Folding Paper Globes

They could get 10% bigger globes out of the same sheet of paper by rotating the icosahedron a bit (14º)

Flexify (http://www.flamingpear.com/flexify-2.html) is an incredible decades-old Photoshop plugin for making these. I made a mobile for a grade school math project using Flexify and NASA's equirectangular planetary maps, turning Mercury into a tetrahedron, Venus a pentahedron, etc.

The gallery of output projections is neat: http://www.flamingpear.com/flexify-output-modes.html

Neat. For folks who are more comfortable with using the terminal than paying for things, I have used this python libraries to make isospheres from 360 photographs: https://github.com/Teque5/pydymax

Neat! There's a notable omission though--none of the earth globes look like earth does from space, with true color* AND clouds. A while ago I got really into making paper globes because I wanted one like that and I couldn't find one I liked. I asked Claude to write a script to generate a net out of this: https://web.archive.org/web/20250316112538/https://visibleea... Instead of an isocahedron, I used gores like a real globe. This approximates a sphere using intersecting cylindrical surfaces (not sure what the term for that solid is!) I made a bunch but usually they came out pretty lumpy, here's the best one: https://imgur.com/a/eikGrTW

*Edit: I also couldn't find a good point of reference for what "true color Earth" even looks like. Different photos/satellites seem to have notably different color calibration, just google "blue marble" and you'll see. And this isn't even getting into the weeds about atmospheric effects, which appear strongest near the limb... obviously there's no way to replicate that on a globe!

Found some imagery:

https://mapscaping.com/diy-folding-paper-globe/

Not same source but related:

https://goodwoodglobes.com/guide/folding-globe

https://lyncean.education/projects/astronomy/polyhedral-glob...

Maybe I'm overlooking, but would love if this had an accurate political globe (e.g., countries and capitals) for my young kids.

I would like to see some pictures of the final product, seems very cool

fil's AirOcean projection on the original ObservableHQ is a fun starting point for rendering your own such map in Javascript from scratch:

https://observablehq.com/@fil/airocean-projection

The source data is down for my vector tile remix of it but here is a screenshot: https://static.observableusercontent.com/thumbnail/0fac8a928... and the code: https://observablehq.com/@thadk/reprojecting-vector-tiles

I did it as a little MapTime project in 2019 or so.

Interesting idea, but are there any photos of the assembled globes anywhere? I’m on mobile but I can’t seem to find an example on the site.

Try interrupted sinusoidal, ot will be less edgy.

https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/interrupted-sinusoidal/

This is a beautiful site. Don't miss it if you haven't been there before

very cool. as someone not familiar with this I would love to see how they look when folded

it's a good idea, but it uses the distorted Mercator projection, and then cuts it so that you can glue it back into a somewhat globe-like shape.

it's distorted, twice.

Earth without water seems a bit deceptive.

this is awesome !