Split screen

[Karinon]

People wished to render two globes in parallel in order to compare dataset. This is a relatively big task as it involves changes in the structure of the Pinia-Stores, all grid implementations, the URL parameters as well as the redesign of the control panel.

[Karinon]

I did a quick test implementation with the help of Copilot, which basically worked quite well, but wasn't ready for production. I noticed that there were a few things that needed to be clarified.

• Do we really want to allow two completely different data sets to be loaded, or do we always stay in the same Zarr store or even in the same variable and only allow different time steps/dimension values? Two different Zarr stores inflate the URL considerably.

• Should we allow certain properties to apply to both Earths at the same time, such as the same camera settings? Synchronizing the camera settings via Pinia felt extremely sluggish in the test implementation and would probably have to be implemented bypassing the Pinia store.

[d70-t]

I'd expect two common use cases:

• observe the same variable of two different datasets (maybe even on different grids)
  • either on two synchronized globes next to each other
  • or as difference value on the same globe (could be a challenge, would probably require computing the difference in pixel space and having two independent grids)
• observe two variables of the same (or different) dataset on two globes

I'd expect that for most cases, having the globes perspective synchronized is important.