Five years ago Stripe introduced animated globes to map live transactions. Three months later GitHub followed with PR route visualizations. Now Palantir uses the same idea for defense and intelligence data on its Gaia platform.
Frontend engineers at Palantir build Gaia’s 3D globe using Three.js and a custom library called Zodiac. The system renders any object from Palantir’s Foundry Ontology that carries geospatial data—points, shapes, or styles—directly in the browser. The goal is to let military and intelligence analysts see operations in the same way the real world unfolds.
Lasse, a frontend engineer in New York, describes the technical hurdles. At high altitudes objects behave differently than on flat maps. Polar regions distort shapes. Satellites from Starlink’s launches must be tracked in orbit, not just on a Mercator projection. The team solved this by converting latitude, longitude, and height into Earth-centered coordinates once, then letting the GPU draw the same geometry across every frame.
The architecture splits tasks cleanly. Backend services store data, filter it, and run heavy computations. Frontend only receives simplified geometry and style rules. A single draw call can now render 10,000 flight lines with identical styling. Users toggle visibility by time or filters without rebuilding geometry. Code snippets show how an EarthLineGroup component batches lines by style, turning thousands of objects into one GPU operation.
Under the hood each object implements a ZodiacObject interface. It handles globe positioning, rotation, and per-frame updates. Engineers focus on visuals and positioning while the framework manages placement. The result is a browser-based 3D map that stays responsive even when network conditions degrade and stakes are highest.
Source: blog.palantir.com