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what is perterra fr?

glsullivan/perterra — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

0JavaScriptAudience · generalComplexity · 3/5Setup · moderate

tl;dr

A WebXR app for Meta Quest and desktop that shows the true straight-line direction through the Earth to any place on the planet.

vibe map

mindmap
  root((Perterra))
    What it does
      True chord directions
      Through-earth view
      Distance labels
    Tech stack
      Three.js
      Vite
      WebXR
    Use cases
      Meta Quest passthrough
      Desktop preview
      Custom landmarks
    Audience
      Curious explorers
      AR hobbyists

Code map

Detail Auto

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filefunction / class

what do people make with this?

VIBE 1

Put on a Meta Quest headset and see which direction, through the ground, points to a city on the other side of the world.

VIBE 2

Preview the app in a desktop browser without owning a headset.

VIBE 3

Fork the project and add your own landmarks to a local data file.

VIBE 4

Explore layer toggles like country borders, cities, and a latitude/longitude grid.

what's the stack?

JavaScriptThree.jsViteWebXR

how it stacks up fr

glsullivan/perterra00kaku/gallery-slider-block3rd-eden/ircb.io
Stars0
LanguageJavaScriptJavaScriptJavaScript
Last pushed2021-05-192016-11-16
MaintenanceDormantDormant
Setup difficultymoderateeasyeasy
Complexity3/52/52/5
Audiencegeneralgeneraldeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

how do i run it?

Difficulty · moderate time til it works · 30min

Needs a Meta Quest headset for the full passthrough experience, and HTTPS hosting since WebXR requires it.

in plain english

Perterra is a browser-based augmented reality app built for Meta Quest headsets, with a desktop preview mode too, that shows you the true direction to any place on Earth. Instead of pointing along the curved surface of the planet the way a normal compass or map would, it draws a straight line through the Earth itself. So instead of saying Hawaii is west of California, it shows you the exact angle below the horizon you would need to look, through the ground, to point straight at it. Wearing the headset, you see labeled points for landmarks, cities, and country outlines arranged around you at their true chord directions, each with a distance label. Nearby places fade out near your own location so you cannot second-guess the app against what you can see out the window, while distant places stay visible and get dimmer the farther through the Earth they are, which helps convey depth on what would otherwise look like a flat sphere. Small countries collapse into a labeled dot until you get close enough for their outline to matter, and overlapping labels fade to avoid clutter. There is also a light blue ocean fill, a grid of latitude and longitude lines, and rings marking distance every thousand miles. Inside the headset, squeezing the grip opens a menu for toggling these layers, dimming the passthrough camera feed, adjusting how quickly distant labels fade in, jumping to view the world from another location like the North Pole, and recalibrating which way is north. A desktop browser preview lets you look around with the mouse, useful for testing without a headset at all. The app is built with Three.js and has very few dependencies, using Vite for development and building a fully static site with no server required, though it must be served over HTTPS since WebXR requires it. It is open source, and the README invites people to fork it, add their own landmarks, and submit changes.

prompts (copy fr)

prompt 1
Explain how Perterra calculates the straight-line chord direction to a place instead of a surface direction.
prompt 2
Walk me through setting up Perterra's dev server and testing it on a Meta Quest over the same Wi-Fi network.
prompt 3
How would I add a new landmark to Perterra's landmarks file?
prompt 4
What does the fog and depth-cueing effect in Perterra do and why is it there?

Frequently asked questions

what is perterra fr?

A WebXR app for Meta Quest and desktop that shows the true straight-line direction through the Earth to any place on the planet.

What language is perterra written in?

Mainly JavaScript. The stack also includes JavaScript, Three.js, Vite.

How hard is perterra to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 30min to a first successful run.

Who is perterra for?

Mainly general.

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This repo across BitVibe Labs

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