SOS Explorer

Eric Hackathorn

About this app

SOS Explorer (SOSx) Mobile is a free, flat screen mobile app version of the popular NOAA Science On a Sphere (SOS). This revolutionary software takes SOS datasets, usually only seen on a 6-foot sphere in large museum spaces, and makes them accessible, portable, and interactive anywhere. SOSx Mobile can immerse the user in animated images such as Saturn’s rings, atmospheric storms, climate change, and ocean temperatures to help explain sometimes complex environmental processes in a way that is intuitive, captivating, interactive, and entertaining. A desktop version, called SOS Explorer, is also available.

Features include:

• Streaming, high-resolution datasets
• Educational videos
• User-guided tours
• Analysis tools
• 100+ datasets
• Global and flat map views

Sample datasets:

• Recent Hurricane Seasons
• Bird Migration
• Earthquake Activity
• Snow and Ice
• Ocean Currents
• Historical Tsunamis
• Facebook Friendships
• Air Traffic
• Planets of the Solar System
• Climate Change Models
• 360 Underwater Imagery
• Narrated Movies
• ...and so much more!

What's New
Upgrade to Unity 2021.3: Experience improved performance and visual fidelity thanks to the latest version of the Unity engine.
Initial support for WMTS (Web Map Tile Service) data sets: Enjoy more efficient loading and visualization of high resolution data sets.
Expanded language support: We have added support for Spanish and Chinese languages, making our application more accessible to users worldwide.
Extended device compatibility: We're excited to announce support for Chromebook via the Google Play Store and for newer Samsung devices.
Automatic rotation of the globe and toggle for legends: Enhance your interaction with better controls of how information is presented on the screen.
Improved rendering for real-time satellite positions: Get a more accurate and visually pleasing representation of satellite data.
New video playback library: Enjoy a smoother video playback experience with AVPro 2.0.
Enhancements to analysis tools: Delve deeper into datasets with our improved and more accurate analysis tools.
Improved navigation controls: Explore the world more easily with our refined navigation controls in both globe and map modes.
Transition to UnityWebRequest for content downloading: Experience more efficient and reliable content delivery.
Updated UI for different device display safe zones: We've improved our user interface to respect the display safe zones for various devices.
Known Issues
We acknowledge a few known issues and are actively working towards their resolution:

Tour content display: Tour content may appear stretched on certain devices due to variations in screen aspect ratios.
Help screen timing: On slower devices, the help screen may appear prematurely.
Visual artifacts when unloading data sets: Users may notice temporary visual artifacts when unloading data sets.
Infinite scrolling in map view: Infinite horizontal scrolling is currently disabled in map view.
Average area analysis tool: This is currently disabled while we work on an improved UI experience.


For more information check out the FAQ.

Ratings and reviews

Initial look is good, but the data... 2012 data for Aurora's? Satellite positions only get the message "unable to load satellite orbit information. Can only spin the globe, some of the movies play, Sat imagery of earth in true color is from 2019. Running on a Note 9. Requires a lot of data, recommend wifi only

Fantastic way to learn about so much, thanks! My only wish is zoomable menus/legends. Even on my 6+ in screen, some if it is barely legible.

I was excited to learn about this app, but I've installed and uninstalled 3x to no avail. I finally got a menu of databases, but nothing works. I couldn't even get it to close. The only thing I could do was rotate the globe. Very sad.

What's new

In SOS Explorer, a bug was found,
Where Chinese texts were not sound.
Simplified, traditional, in a mix,
Characters missing, in a fix.
Now corrected, clarity abounds!