webGL, large datasets, map and Reactive Programming Model

mapbox gl

https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js
see my posts "mapbox" on this blog.

MapboxGL-js provides impressive vector tile rendering capabilities. Although the Mapbox vector tile specification is open source, there aren't yet very many free alternatives to Mapbox's paid vector tile API. Because of this, the examples (of deck.gl) don't use the paid vector tile API and instead use map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0 and data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL.

deck gl 

deck.gl is a WebGL-powered framework for visual exploratory data analysis of large datasets.
deck.gl is designed to make visualization of large data sets simple. It enables users to quickly get impressive visual results with limited effort through composition of existing layers, while offering a complete architecture for packaging advanced WebGL based visualizations as reusable JavaScript layers.
https://github.com/uber/deck.gl
http://uber.github.io/deck.gl/#/

Understanding the Reactive Programming Model

• The key to writing good, performant deck.gl layers lies in understanding how to minimize updates and redundant calculations.
• It is important to understand the implications of the shallow equality comparisons deck.gl performs on layer properties, and how this implies that new data and property objects must only be created when the underlying data actually changes in order to prevent unnecessary updates.
• There is an impressive amount of information (documentation, blog posts, educational videos, etc.) on the reactive programming paradigm in relation to modern web frameworks such as React, Flux and Redux. Where to start depends mostly on your application architecture choices.

Understanding WebGL

This is only needed if you want to create custom layers in deck.gl. Note that while trying out a new ambitious rendering approach for a new layer will likely require deeper knowledge, it is often possible to modify or extend existing deck.gl layers (including modifying the shader code) with a surprisingly limited amount of WebGL knowledge.

There are many web resources for learning WebGL. The luma.gl documentation can be a starting point.

luma gl

luma.gl versions of the classic "Learning WebGL" lessons:

https://uber.github.io/luma.gl/#/

http://uber.github.io/luma.gl/examples/lessons/11/