Eye of the World: every country reached in one turn of the globe

Every look of the visualizer is the same turn of the world seen another way: The Eye of the World, The Radar, The Heartbeat Globe, The Pinning System, The Iris and The Orbit. Open it from its template page, in Classic or Studio, as the look of a Timeline clip, or as a layer over another look; the preview, the still and every export draw the same frames.

The globe turns once every phrase of your song, west to east as the Earth does, so the line where it is midday moves west across the world. That line is the Eye's gaze. As it passes over each capital the country is reached: its land lights and a pin rises on its capital. The count in the corner climbs as it goes, and by the end of the turn every one of the 195 countries on the site's country pages has been reached, then the turn starts again.

• Open the Eye of the World template

Each look shows the same turn:

• The Eye of the World: The Eye above the turning globe, its gaze a beam of light onto the noon line. As midday reaches each capital a pin rises and the Eye's pupil follows it; by the end of the turn every one of the 195 countries is pinned.
• The Radar: The world seen from above the North Pole in a radar's scope: the sweep is the noon line turning clockwise, each capital a blip as it passes, the range rings the latitudes, the count rising to 195.
• The Heartbeat Globe: The globe beating with your song, lub then dub on every beat: it swells, rings spread from it and a trace of the beat runs beneath while the noon line pins the world country by country.
• The Pinning System: The whole world flat, the noon line crossing it west with day on one side and night on the other, a pin dropped on every capital as midday reaches it and the tally kept continent by continent.
• The Iris: The Eye close up: its iris is the world seen from above the pole, the noon line a bright fibre turning round it, the capitals lighting as it passes and the pupil opening with your song.
• The Orbit: The globe from its orbit with day and night: the Eye is its sun, satellites ring it on three orbits, the night side's lands glow and the pins rise where it is noon.

The land is Natural Earth's public-domain map of the world, drawn as dots of equal area so every country keeps its true size on the globe, with the coasts and borders as fine lines. The pins stand on the capitals of the same countries the site's country pages list. A country too small for the map to show, from Monaco to Tuvalu, is reached by the pin on its capital all the same.

Reaching every country is checked, not hoped for: the turn is worked out from the noon line's place, never from the frames, so at any frame rate and from any starting meridian each country is reached exactly once a turn.

The turn takes one phrase of your song (eight bars), so the world turns faster with a faster song. On every beat the world's heart beats, lub then dub: the globe swells, the pins and blips beat, a trace of the beat runs under the heartbeat globe and the Eye's pupil opens a little, as far as the Heartbeat setting lets it. The gaze and the pins brighten with the song's energy, and the Eye blinks once in the last beat of every phrase.

Every phrase starts the turn again, so with no song analysis a phrase-long clip starts and ends on the same frame and loops without a seam.

The Eye greets the world, it does not watch anyone. Nothing is tracked, located or recorded: the pins mark capitals from the map, never a person, a device or an address, and no agency or company is named.

The gaze, the noon line, the radar's sweep and the pins' sparks are motion, not flashes: each light is small and travels, the heartbeat swells the globe instead of blinking it, and every light goes through the flash limiter first, which holds flashes to fewer than three a second. The land's dots, the iris's fibres, the radar's rings, the map's grid and the trace's grid are repeating patterns, so each asks the site's pattern guard how much contrast it may have. The Contrast setting lowers it all further.

Beside the colours, speed, glow and the settings every look has, the visualizer has its own, labelled the same in every editor, and SW Agent can set each one by its name:

• Rendering: How the world is drawn: Night (the land in the look's own colours on the dark), Radar (a phosphor scope's green) or Atlas (a paper map's inks). Choose Night, Radar or Atlas.
• Gaze light: How bright the Eye's gaze, the noon line, the sweep and the pins' sparks are. It rises with the song and never flashes. From 0 to 2.
• Pins: How big the pins on the capitals are and how far their rings spread when the noon line reaches them. From 0 to 1.
• Heartbeat: How strongly the world beats with the song: lub, then dub, on every beat, the globe swelling, the pins and blips beating, the trace rising and the pupil opening. From 0 to 1.5.
• Gaze: How far the Eye's pupil travels to follow the country the noon line has just reached. From 0 to 1.
• Tilt: How far the North Pole leans toward you on the globe, in degrees (negative leans the south toward you). From -30 to 30.
• Labels: How many words: the count of countries reached this turn, the country at noon, the tallies by continent, the bearing and the beats a minute. 0 shows none. From 0 to 1.
• Sparks: Sparks drifting in the light and the puff where the gaze lands on the beat. From 0 to 1.
• Variation: Where on the world the turn starts: each number starts the noon line over another meridian. The same number always gives the same. From 0 to 99.

Layer assets and the Layers tool offer each moment's own layers (the Eye, the globe, the gaze, the pins, the radar's scope, the map's grid, the heartbeat's trace and the satellites) on their own, to add to any project. Motion graphics has every moment as a design to customize, and the Stream studio has it in its rotation.

• Browse Layer assets

Ask for it in your own words: "an eye watching the world", "a spinning globe with pins on every country", "a radar sweep over the world" or "a heartbeat globe for my track", and SW Agent builds the project on it. In an open project, say "switch to the radar", "show the flat map" or "turn the labels off"; each change is one step of undo in Classic and in Studio.

Through our MCP server, get_engine lists the visualizer's moments and settings, and build_editor_setup opens Classic or Studio on any of them.