Covid-19 3D Visualization

Overview

During the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, understanding the geographical spread of cases was critical. This project created an interactive 3D globe visualization that pulls real-time case data from an open-source REST API and maps it geographically, allowing users to explore the pandemic's progression across countries and regions in their web browser.

Process & Approach

Built in Unity and deployed as a WebGL application, the visualization fetches Covid-19 case data from a public REST API, parses the JSON response, and maps case counts to geographical coordinates on a 3D globe. Visual encoding uses height and color intensity of extruded markers to represent case density. The WebGL build was optimized for reasonable load times and performance in desktop browsers.

Key Features

• Interactive 3D globe with geographical case mapping
• Real-time data fetching from public REST API
• Visual encoding of case density through height and color
• Web-based deployment via Unity WebGL
• Country-level data exploration with hover/click interaction

Technical Challenges

Unity WebGL builds are notoriously large and slow to load. Optimizing the build size and initial load time while maintaining visual quality and interactivity required aggressive asset compression and lazy data loading. Parsing and mapping large JSON datasets to 3D coordinates performantly in the WebGL runtime was another key optimization target.

Impact & Learnings

The project demonstrated that Unity WebGL can serve as a viable platform for data visualization applications, bridging the gap between rich 3D interactivity and web accessibility. It provided an intuitive spatial representation of pandemic data that complemented the flat charts and tables dominating dashboards at the time.

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