Globe plot

[James Grammatikos]

Hi everybody,

TL; DR I need to figure out how to add a pan-/zoomable globe to a GLScatterPlot without outside packages

I'm looking to make a 3d scatter plot overlaid onto a globe that plots the positions of overhead satellites as points in the scatter plot. Specifically I want to be able to pan around the globe in a google earth-esque manner and have the satellites update in the correct locations. Packages like basemap can handle this type of goal without too much difficulty, but I am restricted in the packages that I'm allowed to install because ~reasons~, and it was a hassle just to get pyqtgraph allowed, so I'd like to do it with just the built in 3d plotting features. It should look something like this, but probably be zoomed in a bit closer. Think view from the ISS. Also, it'll only have a few satellites, but it will show a trail of points for where it has been.

My thought was to find some type of 3d mesh or surface of the earth, plot that as a sphere of some fixed size, add dots where the satellites are, do some type of fancy camera angling to make it look right, and then possibly adjust the left/right/middle mouse drag events. I'm most confused about where I would get the earth skin/mesh/surface/whatever and how I add that onto a scatter plot. Performance issues are also something of a concern. I could refresh the plot fast enough with a buttload of points (~1 million) before I noticed any amount of slowdown, but I don't know how having a globe in there will affect performance. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
James