Global Flow

Below are a series of images around the world of vessel positions as they appear in Visual Fusion (with a variant of Bing cartography as a basemap).  The data come from a combination of about a dozen feeds.  The direction of the vessels and their speed are represented by angle and wake length; vessels are color coded by type.

The arrangement turns out to be a beautiful representation of global commerce, with intercontinental arteries and coastal veins that wind up bays and rivers.  Check it out...

The Eastern Seaboard of the United States is a hive of busy ports (download ginormous full-res 2MB image).

Orderly shipping lanes navigate the English Chanel (download the really really rediculously good looking 3MB full-res image).

For centuries a gateway between East and West, the Bosphorus narrowly channels vessels through Istanbul.  (stuff your had drive with the stunning 4MB full-res image)

The Northwest Mediterranean.  Check out the shipping lanes as they merge into the Pillars of Hercules  (download the 5MB full-res version -I made this one my desktop image and have no regrets).

The Panama Canal.  Did you know that to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific, you actually travel east? (download the poster-szed original 2MB version)

The Southern Mediterranean, including Athens and the Suez Canal (here is the uncommonly huge original 3MB size).

The Yangtze River is loaded with shipping and fishing vessels (get the gargantuan full-res 4MB original).