Ocean Playground
A web-based viewer for ocean glider and other platform data. Load your own OG1 NetCDF files, or open live deployments from BODC.
Renamed: Glider Playground is now Ocean Playground. So far only the name has changed: the PyPI package, the
glider-playgroundcommand, the~/.glider_playgroundfolder and the website (glider-playground.co.uk) still use the old name and will be moved over time.
Live site: glider-playground.co.uk, no login needed (it runs on a Raspberry Pi, so it can be slow)
One-page guides (A5 PDF): Cheat sheet, how to use it · Features, what it does
Install & Run
pip install glider-playground
glider-playground
This opens the app in your browser. Press Ctrl+C in the terminal to stop it.
Install from source
git clone https://github.com/Orlando-PB/glider-playground.git
cd glider-playground
pip install .
Loading Data
Click the file name (top left) to open the file panel. From there you can:
- Open a live BODC deployment: platforms reporting in the last week are listed at the top
- Add files: pick individual
.ncfiles - Add folder: load every
.ncfile in a folder
Each file is processed once in the background; click it when it's ready.
File format: files must be OG1 (or OG1-compatible), the OceanGliders community NetCDF format.
Live data is provided by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC).
Views & Layout
Plots, the globe and the 3D view are panels. Drag a panel by its header to move it, use the + on its edges to add another panel beside it, drag the dividers to resize, and close a panel with its ✕.
Views
The View bar sets up the whole layout:
| View | Shows |
|---|---|
| Classic | One plot, with the globe and 3D view (the default) |
| Map | Globe and 3D view side by side |
| Overview | Globe and 3D view next to the main plots |
| Dashboard | Globe, 3D view and six plots, each with a depth-profile sidebar |
| Duo | Two globes (chlorophyll and currents) next to backscatter and salinity plots |
| Bio-optics | Temperature, chlorophyll, backscatter and PAR, with a full-height globe |
| Chemistry | Nitrate, pH, DIC and redox, with a full-height globe (greyed out if the file has no chemistry sensors) |
| Metadata | Deployment summary, map, instruments, and searchable variable and attribute lists (click a variable to plot it; derived variables are labelled) |
Presets
Presets pick what a plot shows. They are grouped into four menus:
| Group | Presets |
|---|---|
| Core | Phases, Dive, PRES vs PRES2, PRES & PRES2, Sensor temps |
| Physics | Thermal, T-S Diagram, Salinity, Density (each also as a "2" version for a second CTD, e.g. a SixSense sensor) |
| Bio-optics | Chlorophyll, Oxygen, Backscatter, PAR |
| Chemistry | Nitrate, Phosphate, Alkalinity, pH, DIC, Redox |
Presets the file has no data for are greyed out.
Globe & Overlays
- Globe: the glider's GPS track, with every other loaded deployment shown faintly
- Copernicus overlays: surface fields from satellites and models: chlorophyll-a, temperature, salinity, O₂, pH, biomass and sea level anomaly, plus currents as moving particles. Smooth interpolates the grid, and Latest shows today's conditions instead of the deployment date
- Glider DAC: depth-averaged current for each dive, when the file has it
- Argo floats: the last position of every Argo float; click one for its details and drift track
- Research ships: latest positions of RRS Discovery, RRS James Cook and RRS Sir David Attenborough
3D View
The dive track in 3D over NOAA bathymetry. Depth is stretched so the dives are visible.
- Playback: press play, or drag the slider, to move the vehicle along its track
- Style menu:
- Home: back to the starting view
- Follow: keep the camera on the vehicle
- True height: turn off the depth stretch
- Argo: floats that surfaced near the glider, with their dives
- Dive lines: show or hide the Argo floats' dives
- Wildlife: the odd animal swimming past (just for fun)
- Track colour: colour the track by a preset, or by whatever the selected plot shows
Missions
Missions (top bar) puts several platforms in one 3D scene on a shared time bar: gliders, ALRs, Argo floats and ships. Live BODC gliders working near each other are grouped into a mission automatically. You can also write your own as a JSON file (see missions/README.md). Click a platform to open its data.
Copernicus Setup
The overlays and currents come from Copernicus Marine, which needs a free account and a one-time login:
- Register at marine.copernicus.eu/register.
- Install the toolbox:
pip install copernicusmarine
- Log in (this saves your credentials locally), then restart Ocean Playground:
copernicusmarine login
Until you're logged in, the app tells you which of these steps is missing.
Overlays and currents are provided by the E.U. Copernicus Marine Service:
- Global Ocean Physics Analysis and Forecast. E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information (CMEMS). Marine Data Store (MDS). DOI: 10.48670/moi-00016
- Global Ocean Biogeochemistry Analysis and Forecast. CMEMS, MDS. DOI: 10.48670/moi-00015
- Global Ocean Colour L4 (NRT / Multi-Year). CMEMS, MDS. DOI: 10.48670/moi-00279, 10.48670/moi-00281
- Global Ocean Sea Level L4 (NRT / Multi-Year). CMEMS, MDS. DOI: 10.48670/moi-00149, 10.48670/moi-00148
Plotting & Inspecting
Presets set up the plots. Open Settings (top bar) to choose any variable for the x axis, y axis and colour, and for the options below.
- Zoom: drag a box on the plot; double-click to reset
- Colour range: drag the ends of the colour bar (Auto / Reset beneath it)
- Inspector: hover the plot to read the nearest sample's values
- Profile: adds a value-against-depth plot to the left of a plot
- Order / Size / Quality: which points draw on top, marker size, and how many points are drawn (up to every point)
- Colour palette: a choice of oceanographic colour maps
- Phases: show only some glider phases
- Sync time: zooming one plot zooms them all
- Share: copy a link that reopens this exact view
- Download: save a PNG of the whole workspace, without the controls
- Dark theme: the moon button in the top bar
Profiles
If a file has dive profiles, a Profiles navigator appears. Step through single profiles or cycles, filter by direction (up, down or transect), or show everything.
Quality Control
QC flags follow the Argo convention: 0 No QC, 1 Good, 2 Probably good, 3 Probably bad, 4 Bad, 5 Changed, 8 Interpolated, 9 Missing. Only samples with an allowed flag are shown (default 0,1,2,5,8).
- PRES gaps of up to 5 minutes are always interpolated (flag
8); longer gaps are real gaps and are left empty. - Exact
0.0fill values in PRES/TEMP/CNDC are always flagged missing (flag9) and removed. - NaT and out-of-order timestamps are always dropped. Other out-of-range times (before 1990 or in the future) are flagged bad (flag
4) and can be filtered like any other flag.
Uninstall
pip uninstall glider-playground
Developer Info
To change the default plots, views or colour palettes, edit glider_playground/plot_presets.json (instructions at the top of the file) and restart.
See OVERVIEW.md for the code layout, architecture, data pipeline and deployment.
License
Licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
Developed by Orlando Prugel-Bennett at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC).
© 2026 National Oceanography Centre.
1 maintainer
Metadata
1 maintainer
Release files for glider-playground 0.2.109
For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.
Source distribution (sdist)
| File | Size | Uploaded | |
|---|---|---|---|
| glider_playground-0.2.109.tar.gz | 2.7 MB | Details |
Built distribution (wheel)
| File | Interpreter | ABI | Platform | Reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| glider_playground-0.2.109-py3-none-any.whl | Python 3 | none | any | Details |
Total release size: 5.6 MB
Release files / glider_playground-0.2.109.tar.gz
| Download URL | glider_playground-0.2.109.tar.gz |
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| Size | 2.7 MB |
| Tags | Source |
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| Download URL | glider_playground-0.2.109-py3-none-any.whl |
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| Size | 2.9 MB |
| Tags | Python 3 |
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