This feature is an alternative projection of the world map which can be brought up using the shortcut key combination Shift-G. This projection can be zoomed in and out and can be rotated using the right mouse button just like with the flat map projection. Additionally, the globe can be set to auto-rotate to simulate a merely cosmetic day/night cycle.

Like I said before. This isn’t really a new feature. The first public releases of Worlds had a globe projection too. But it was very weird and badly implemented, so I ended up removing it from the game a couple of years back. Thanks to the experience I have gained up to this point with the 3D engine, this time around I was able to do a much better implementation the solves the two main issues I had before: The map texture wraps much more nicely around the globe (still looks rather ugly at the poles but not nearly as bad), and the drag-to-rotate mechanic is way smoother and doesn’t screw with the camera angle as it used to do. In addition to that I added a nice Milky Way skybox and a very simple camera zoom which wasn’t present on the original version.

Here’s another screenshot with a randomly generated world with the history simulation already in progress and the camera zoomed in a little bit: