Polymath

sphere grid – [gizmos]

Here's a strange Flash gizmo. Project a spherical map onto a rectangular grid, then show how each region of the map connects to its neighboring regions. sphere grid

The idea behind this was to remove the distortions you get when you play a game like Civilization with its rectangular map. With a sphere grid, you could build a city at the North Pole and do pathfinding that would follow great circle paths.