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🏔️ Inverness: Gateway to the Scottish Highlands and Loch Ness

An interactive 3D terrain model of the Great Glen fault and Loch Ness, with a depth-sounder style cross-section visualizer and a Highlands elevation explorer around Inverness.

Geology & Earth Science3DAdvanced60 FPS🌍 Earth

A 3D terrain model of the Great Glen — the fault-controlled trough that runs from Fort Augustus to Inverness and holds Loch Ness — with a live depth-sounder cross-section and a drainable loch that reveals the glacial trough beneath.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Loch Ness occupies a straight strike-slip fault later deepened by glaciers, giving it extreme depth relative to its width. Draining the water and scanning along its length shows why the loch bed is so much steeper and deeper than the surrounding Highland glens.

🎮 How to Use

Adjust vertical exaggeration to read the relief, drag the water level to drain the loch, and slide the sonar position from Fort Augustus to Inverness while watching the depth-sounder panel trace the real bed profile beneath the boat.

💡 Did You Know?

Loch Ness never freezes and rarely mixes fully — its huge, cold, dark volume is part of why sonar contacts and misidentified waves have fuelled Nessie sightings for nearly a century.

⚙ Under the hood

An interactive 3D terrain model of the Great Glen fault and Loch Ness, with a depth-sounder style cross-section visualizer and a Highlands elevation explorer around Inverness.

terrain-modeling3d-visualizationscotlandloch-nessfault-linehighlandselevationThree.js

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install