How QuakeViewer3D cuts through Earth's crust and renders solid 3D mantle and core cross-sections using WebGL clipping planes and custom shader pipelines.
1. Hemisphere Clipping Planes
Using analytical cutting planes in fragment shaders to discard foreground hemispheres while preserving hypocenter locations.
2. 5-Layer Solid Interior Modeling
Generating procedural concentric disk meshes representing:
- Crust (0–35 km)
- Upper Mantle (35–410 km)
- Lower Mantle (410–2,890 km)
- Outer Core (2,890–5,150 km, liquid)
- Inner Core (5,150–6,371 km, solid iron)
3. Eliminating Ghosting with Depth Occlusion
Configuring back-face culling and z-buffer testing so continental crust on the far side does not show through the sliced earth.