I am currently working on a project to visualize a worldwide TSP in which the nodes have specific coordinates on Earth. For a quick viz, I have successfully used GMT.jl (which is quite a great package) to plot specific regions of Earth with different projections and the nodes using a Pluto notebook.
However, as I am nearing the end of the project, I would like to make a (interactive if possible) 3D visualization using Julia tools of the final tour. I have taken a quick look at Makie (as well as WGLMakie in order for it to run in Pluto) and GeoMakie. Sadly, I still don’t have clear what is the best route for me to go or a basic example of what I want to do. I have seen people plot Earth on 3D but I would like to see some aditional pointers for working with GeoMakie, plotting specific coordinates on 3D projections as well as directed edges between them.
As an additional note, any quickstart guide or documentation for GeoJSON would be appreciated as I have avoided using it but it seems like it’s quite pervasive.
I don’t come from a GIS background and it’s the first time I really get into plotting geographic data so if my questions are too nooby I apologize.
Based on my limited experience, my assumption is that 3D interactive visualization using Julia might not be easy, however, I do believe that you are on a good path re GMT and Makie / Makie derivatives. I do not have a GIS background as well, however, I did a quick scan of this area. The best tools for this job IMO might be Hexagon’s LuciadLightspeed (Java related) and Esri ArcGis products (i.e. ArcGIS Earth) (mostly Python related). Also Google Earth should be able to offer interactivity through its API (not sure about it). The first two are not free, not sure about Google Earth API. If you do not need 3D but are looking for interactivity you may also take a look at kepler.gl. I like it a lot. I have received information that it should work in Pluto but I have not checked it first hand (it has Jupyter (Python), Tableau and VS Code “interfaces”). Hope it helps at least to some extent.
If you’re looking to plot in 3D, you probably don’t need GeoMakie! GeoMakie is really meant for 2D projections, and specializes on the Proj4.jl library.