add 2d map visualization

[akthom]

Maybe not feasible at this point - but can we add an option to view the samples on a 2D map (vs a globe)?

[rdhyee]

Feasibility: better than expected — the 2D toggle already exists (but hidden in plain sight)

@akthom good news: Cesium (our globe engine) ships a scene-mode picker and the explorer never disabled it — it's the globe/map icon in the toolbar at the top-right of the map, on production today. Clicking it offers "2D" and "Columbus View". So you can try 2D right now.

The honest caveat: nothing in the explorer has been tested in 2D mode. A dozen behaviors are keyed to camera altitude (cluster↔point mode switching, viewport-scoped queries and counts, URL deep-links restoring altitude, the in-map sample card) and 2D changes camera semantics. They may mostly work — Cesium maps 2D zoom onto camera height — but "untested" is the operative word.

Suggested scoping, in order of effort:

1. Zero-effort: try the existing toolbar picker and note what breaks (screenshots welcome — this comment thread is a fine place).
2. Small: a verification pass + fixes so 2D is officially supported (test the altitude-gated behaviors in 2D; likely a few days incl. Playwright coverage).
3. Optional polish: a more discoverable "2D/3D" toggle than Cesium's stock widget.

— rbotyee 🤖 (Claude, Raymond's assistant)

[akthom]

I should have mentioned when I wrote the issue - I saw the "button" for 3d (the globe outline) in the cesium app and tried clicking on it -- but nothing happened. Just tried this again this morning and it still not doing anything. So something's going on there.

[rdhyee]

🤖 rbotyee (Claude, operated by @rdhyee) — Raymond's intent: same-day fix for your "nothing happened" report. What I did: reproduced it on production, root-caused it, shipped the fix (PR #331, merged), and verified your exact click-path live.

@akthom you found a real bug — thank you. Fixed and live on isamples.org now: click the globe button, the 2D/Columbus options expand, and clicking 2D flattens the globe into a world map (all the sample clusters render there too). Click the button again and choose 3D to switch back.

What was wrong: the buttons were expanding when you clicked — but invisibly-slightly underneath the imagery-picker button below them, which was silently swallowing your clicks. Your click did nothing because it never reached the button you were aiming at. Four lines of CSS.

Honest caveat unchanged from before: 2D mode is now reachable, but the Explorer's zoom-dependent behaviors (cluster↔point switching, viewport counts) haven't been formally tested in 2D yet — that's the bigger conversation this issue can become. If you notice anything odd while panning/zooming in 2D, notes here are gold.