Development blog ·

From orbit to a mountain valley

The first big milestone: the whole planet, from space down to a single valley, in one seamless flight.

You can now start in orbit, pick any spot on the planet and fly down to it without a loading screen or a seam. The shape of the land is real, built from public scientific measurements of the Earth: every mountain range, river valley and coastline is where it should be, and so is the floor of the sea, from the shallow shelves along the coasts to the deepest trenches.

Ridge after ridge of the Great Smoky Mountains fading into blue haze, seen from about three kilometers up.
The Great Smoky Mountains on an October afternoon. In-development capture, October 2026.

The whole planet is there from the start, and a few places get extra detail first. In the Great Smoky Mountains you can follow the ridges and hollows one by one. In eastern Turkey, Mount Ararat rises over the plain with its smaller twin beside it. Lake Van, high on the Anatolian plateau, stretches out to the far shore. The Serengeti and the Chesapeake Bay are already in too.

Greater and Little Ararat rising above a wide plain, seen from the northeast.
Greater and Little Ararat from the plain to the northeast. In-development capture, October 2026.
Lake Van stretching to a distant shore with a volcano on the horizon.
Lake Van, about 1,640 meters up, with the Süphan volcano on the far shore. In-development capture, October 2026.

What you are seeing is the bones of the world. The colors are still simple, and the soft haze is a stand-in for the real atmosphere, which comes next, along with the light that makes a place feel like itself: golden evenings, morning fog in the valleys, the blue hour after sunset.