NoCloudware
PoleShift
PWA · Free

PoleShift

What if you moved the North Pole?
Pick any point on the planet and the whole world reorders itself around the new axis.

Open PoleShiftView source code
Installable PWA · Zero dependencies · No build step · Works offline · Real 3D globe

Screenshots

Side panel with the 51 preset places next to the untransformed world mapThe 3D globe in its initial state, with the Earth's real axisSide panel and map after choosing the pole, with the new equator drawn in yellowThe 3D globe reordered around the chosen axis, with equator and poles recalculatedCities table with current and new latitude, sorted north to south

What is PoleShift?

A counterfactual geography toy. Instead of asking where the North Pole is, you decide where it should be — and the app rebuilds the world from scratch: new equator, new poles, new latitudes, on a real rotating 3D globe.

Flat map

The real world, untransformed. Tap any point and it becomes the new North Pole.

3D globe

The Earth already reordered around the axis you chose, with equator, poles and coastlines recalculated. Spins on its own, draggable by hand.

14 cities

Current latitude and the latitude each city would have in the reordered world, sorted north to south and colour-coded by distance to the new poles and equator.

51 preset places

Set the new North Pole, the new South Pole, or a point that should land on the new equator. Choose one and the other two resync by themselves.

Geometric, not physical

A rigid rotation of the sphere, not a simulation of axial drift or precession. Distances between cities never change — only the latitude assigned to them.

Installable PWA

Single HTML file, no build, no bundler, no map library. Installable and works offline.

How it works

1
The axis is a vectorEvery point on Earth becomes a unit vector. The chosen North Pole is just that vector P; the South Pole is −P and the equator is the plane perpendicular to P.
2
The map is rebuiltAn orthonormal basis on the new equatorial plane is built with Gram-Schmidt, then every point is read back as a new latitude and longitude. With P = [0,0,1] the result is the identity.
3
The globe is rotated in spaceNo flattening: points are rotated straight into the new basis and drawn with an orthographic projection. The back half is clipped to a circle — that clipping is what makes it look like a sphere.
4
Three selectors, one calculationNew pole, new south pole and a point on the new equator are the same maths inverted in three directions.

Technologies

Single HTML file

HTML, CSS, logic, data and the three drawing canvases in 513 lines

Canvas 2D

Flat map, 3D globe and city list, all hand-drawn

3D cartesian maths

Unit vectors, Gram-Schmidt, orthographic projection, trigonometry

Plain-text geodata

286 nested coastline polygons, 14 cities and 51 places as plain lists

Web App Manifest

Installable, portrait orientation, themed

Service Worker

Network-first for the HTML, cache-first for icons and manifest

Move the pole

Free, no account, nothing to install to try it.

Open PoleShift