Development blog · October 21, 2026

The land as it grew

This week the land got its natural colors back, the snow moved to where it really lasts all year, and the lakes and the sea settled at their true levels.

An Earth without people should not only have the right shape. It should wear the right colors. Our picture of the planet from space was taken in our own time, so up close it showed today’s fields, pastures and towns. This week that changed.

Now, as you come down toward the ground, the land takes on the color of what grew there before anyone farmed it. The plains along the Ganges, farmed for thousands of years, turn back to deep forest. The cornfields of Iowa become tallgrass prairie. Deserts stay deserts, and the wild places, like the Great Smoky Mountains and the Serengeti, look just as they did. The colors come from a scientific map of the world’s natural regions, matched to the wildest places we could find in each one.

Forested foothills rising ridge after ridge toward a line of snow-covered peaks. — Looking north across the forested foothills of Nepal to the snows of the Everest region. In-development capture, October 2026.

Snow and ice that last all year now sit where they really do. Mount Ararat wears its summit cap while its smaller twin stays bare. The Himalaya are white above the forests, but the high, dry plateau of Tibet, nearly as high as the tallest peaks of the Alps, stays bare, as it is in summer. Snow that comes and goes with the seasons is not in yet.

Mount Ararat with a white cap of ice on its summit and the bare cone of Little Ararat beside it. — Greater Ararat’s year-round ice cap, with Little Ararat to the right. In-development capture, October 2026.

Lakes now meet the land the way they do in life, with shorelines that follow every cove and point. On the volcano Nemrut, near the western shore of Lake Van, a lake fills the crater, and Lake Van spreads out beyond it.

A volcanic crater holding a lake, with the wide expanse of Lake Van and a distant volcano beyond. — The crater lake of Nemrut, with Lake Van and the volcano Süphan beyond. In-development capture, October 2026.

One more change you would never notice, and it is one of our favorites. The sea is not as level as it looks. Gravity pulls a little harder in some places than in others, so the ocean’s surface sits about 100 meters lower south of India than it would on an evenly shaped Earth, and about 85 meters higher near New Guinea. The land, the sea and every lake in the game now sit at their true height.