All of Seoul as an interactive 3D miniature

The easy version of this demo is one famous building, lovingly lit. This is the other version: all 25 districts and the surrounding area, roughly 267,000 buildings, rotate-and-zoom controls, an automated fly-through of 14 landmarks, three lighting modes and mobile touch support.

What makes it more than a pretty render is the honesty about method. The buildings come from OpenStreetMap footprints and real terrain data, simplified for performance; heights are exaggerated 4× so the city reads; landmarks are labelled as interpretive recreations, not survey-grade models. The data sources and licences are all credited.

Geography at this scale used to mean a GIS team. Here it is one person's first project on a new model, and he timed it: 43 minutes and 38 seconds from creating the project to deploying it.