AYNI XR user manual

AYNI XR shows how our planet is changing: live and recorded environmental data on a globe you can turn in your hands. Use it in a web browser, in a Meta Quest headset, or in augmented reality on an Android phone or tablet. It is made by Pachamama Studios.

This manual explains every part of the app in plain language, for teachers, students, researchers and anyone presenting to a group.

Last updated: 6 October 2026.

Contents

1. Getting started
2. Finding data: the Browse panel
3. Watching a dataset
4. The Tools panel
5. Reading values: pins and the graph
6. Analyze: statistics, lines and boxes
7. Comparing datasets on several globes
8. Ayni Chatbot
9. Playlists
10. Khipus
11. Lessons
12. Your own data
13. Sharing and downloading
14. Meetings
15. The Situation room
16. Shared sessions and the AYNI XR marker
17. VR on Meta Quest
18. AR on Android phones and tablets
19. Accounts and plans
20. Privacy and your data
21. Keyboard shortcuts
22. Help, feedback and troubleshooting
23. What works where

Getting started

Open vr.ayni.eu.com in a current browser: Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari on a computer, or Chrome on Android. Nothing needs installing.

Your free account

AYNI XR is free, with an account. The first time, the welcome page asks you to sign up or sign in, which is the same step:

• By email: type your address and press Email me a sign-in link, then open the link we send (it works once, for 15 minutes).
• With Google: press Continue with Google.

You stay signed in on that browser for 30 days after your last visit.

Got a link from a teacher or presenter? Just open it. Joining a class, a room or a meeting needs no account. If someone shared a dataset link with you, sign in and the app opens that dataset.

The privacy questions

On your first visit the app asks two separate questions:

1. "May this app report usage and error events so we can keep it working?"
2. "May the app remember which datasets you open, on this device only, for Browse's Recent tab?"

• Each has its own Allow / Remember and No thanks: both are equally easy, and the app works the same either way (without the second, Browse's Recent tab stays empty).
• If you ignore them, nothing is sent and nothing is remembered.
• If you answered the first question before the second existed, you are asked only the second.
• On a phone the question waits behind a small pulsing shield in the top-left corner. Tap it when you are ready.

You can change your answer at any time. See Privacy and your data.

What is on the screen

On a computer, the Browse panel opens by itself. When Browse or Tools is open, the globe slides over to stay in the free space.

Moving the globe

• Turn it: drag with the mouse or one finger.
• Zoom: scroll, or pinch with two fingers. A dataset with fine detail (finer than about 200 m, such as satellite surface temperature over a city) lets you zoom closer than usual while it is shown.
• Back to the starting view: double-click (or double-tap) the globe.

Finding data: the Browse panel

Press Browse (bottom right) to open the list of datasets. Press ✕ or Browse again to close it.

The panel has five tabs:

• Catalog: every dataset, with search and filters.
• Playlists: your playlists (see Playlists).
• Recent: the datasets you opened lately, newest first, kept only on this device and only if you said yes to remembering them (see The privacy questions). Clear history empties it.
• Khipus: open a Khipu file, your saved Khipus (My Khipus), and the lessons for teachers, which come with an Education plan (see Khipus and Lessons).
• My data: your own files as private datasets, with a Researcher or Lab plan (see Your own data). Signed in on any other plan it shows the datasets others shared with you, with a lock on uploading; signed out, the lock opens the plans.

The panel opens on the tab you used last.

Searching

Type what you are looking for in Search datasets…, in your own words. You don't need the catalogue's keywords:

• Typos are forgiven: "temprature" finds temperature.
• Related words count: "wildfires" finds fires, "SST" finds sea surface temperature, "storm" finds hurricanes. Some Spanish words work too, such as "incendios" and "huracán".
• The kind of data counts: "live fires", "future sea level", "rain forecast".
• Titles come first: while the sort is Relevance, datasets whose title starts with what you typed come first, A to Z ("marine" lists Marine Heatwaves and Marine Vessel Traffic first). Then come the titles with your words further on, A to Z ("Observed Ocean Acidification (Copernicus Marine)"), and last the datasets found through their keywords, topics or related words, best match first. A kind shown on the card's badge ("Forecast", "Real Time") does not count as the first word, but typing it still finds those datasets first.
• The same order everywhere: the search in a headset or on a phone lists datasets in this order too, and so do the searches in Tools → Layers → Real time, Playlists and the lessons.

A moment after you stop typing, more datasets about the same thing may appear under Related by meaning, even when they share no word with your search ("is the Arctic melting" finds sea ice). For this, the text of your search is sent to our server; it is not stored (see Privacy and your data).

You can also search by property:

• category:"snow and ice", format:video, keyword:hurricane, period:monthly.
• Repeating a property means "either": category:ocean category:atmosphere.
• Different properties and plain words must all match.

If nothing matches, the app offers to ask Ayni Chatbot instead.

Filters

The filters are behind the Filters button beside the search results, so the list keeps its room. The number on the button is how many filters are on. Press it to open them, and click anywhere else (or press Esc) to close them. The first section, Kind & theme, is open:

• Kind of data:
  • Live: updated as it happens;
  • Forecast: what is expected next;
  • Projection: possible futures, such as climate scenarios;
  • Reanalysis: the past, rebuilt from observations and models;
  • Historical: past records;
  • SOS catalogue: NOAA's Science On a Sphere library, about 350 datasets (videos and pictures), kept on AYNI's own servers. The details of each one credit NOAA and link to its page there.
• Theme:
  • Atmosphere;
  • Ocean & water;
  • Climate;
  • Fire & air quality;
  • Land & life;
  • Space;
  • People.

More sections fold underneath:

• Category & content: topic tags.
• Format & medium: video, image, story or other.
• Time: recently viewed, date added, and the years the data covers.
• Quality & availability: has captions, has a story (a Khipu, see Khipus).

Choices in one group mean "any of these"; choices in different groups must all match. Active filters show as small chips you can remove, and Clear filters removes them all. The search and filters are kept in the page address, so you can share a filtered list as a link.

Views and sorting

The small icons beside Filters switch the view. Every view shows the same datasets as the search and filters:

• Cards is the normal list.
• Map shows where each dataset has data, on an Equal Earth world map (every area at its true size). Scroll or pinch to zoom, drag to move, double-click to see the whole world again. Regional datasets (Spain, the Canary Islands, the United States, the Netherlands, Europe) show as outlined areas; most datasets cover the whole world and appear when you tick Include global. Datasets of other worlds, the Sun, and stories are not on the map. Click a region (Spain, for example) to show only the datasets made for it: a Region: Spain filter appears beside Filters, and the region is outlined on the map. Click another region to switch, or the same one again, the filter's × or Clear region to show everything. Draw region keeps only datasets in an area you drag out. Datasets that cover the whole world are left out of a region filter.
• Timeline places datasets in time; drag along it to keep a range of years. Datasets without calendar dates are not on it. Model simulations are among them: their dates are the model's own years, so while one plays its date reads "Model year 1, Jan 1".
• Graph shows how datasets, topics and keywords connect.
• Sort (under the icons) by Relevance, Newest or A–Z.

On a narrow phone only Cards and Map are offered.

The cards

Each card is one compact row: a picture, the title and two badges:

• The kind: Live, Forecast, Projection, Reanalysis, Historical, or the catalogue.
• The package a live stream belongs to, or Free for the catalogue. Packages are:
  • Atmosphere & Weather;
  • Ocean;
  • Climate;
  • Fire, Smoke & Air Quality;
  • Hazards & events.

A lock on the package badge means the stream is in a package your plan does not include. The Science On a Sphere catalogue is free with your account; live streams are in the AYNI XR plans' packages. Loading a locked stream opens the plans instead, with a line saying which package it is in. In a meeting or a shared session you still see whatever the presenter shows: watching is covered by their plan.

Click a card to open it: its description, source, who made it, its time range, its frames and its keywords (click a keyword to search for it). Press Load to put the dataset on the globe.

The dataset menu

Every dataset has a small menu. To open it:

• right-click the card (with a mouse);
• press and hold it (on a touch screen);
• press its + button (anywhere, including a headset);
• or, with the keyboard, focus the card and press the menu key or Shift+F10.

The menu offers:

• Load and Details;
• Add to new playlist…: name a new playlist; the dataset goes in it;
• Add to playlist: your playlists. A tick shows where the dataset already is; choose a ticked playlist to take it out;
• Share link….

The Add to playlist button in a loaded dataset's information panel opens the same menu.

Watching a dataset

A dataset that covers only part of the Earth, such as Spain or the Canary Islands, opens with the globe turned to its region and zoomed to fit it.

Playback

Datasets that move have controls at the bottom right:

Drag the bar underneath to move through time. Live streams have a date track instead: drag along it to pick a date. On a computer, rest the mouse on the track to see the date there before you click; on a phone or tablet the date shows while your finger drags. The dataset plays in a loop and pauses for 4 seconds on its last frame.

With a real-time stream on top (Tools → Layers → Real time), a yellow track appears above the green one, on the same dates (one per stream, stacked as on the globe: the newest on top). It is filled where the stream has data and hatched where it has none; while the date is in a hatched stretch, the stream is hidden on the globe and its marker is hollow. Each track is labelled with its dataset. Dragging along either track moves both. At the right of each yellow track's label, the eye hides that stream on the globe and shows it again (it keeps following the date, and its track dims while hidden), and the ✕ takes the stream off.

Left of each yellow track are two buttons:

• ⠿ (the grip): press and hold it, then drag the track up or down to change the order the streams are drawn in. The top track is drawn on top. On a touch screen, hold for a moment until the track lifts, then drag. A track can't go below the green one: the dataset is always at the bottom. With the keyboard, select the grip and press ↑ or ↓. Esc while dragging puts it back. With one stream, there is nothing to move.
• The palette button shows the stream's colours. Press it to choose another palette and type the minimum and maximum the colours run between, in the stream's units. The globe changes as you choose. Done, ✕, Esc or a click outside closes it. The stream keeps these colours for next time, as a dataset does (see View), on this browser and, signed in, on your account. A stream with shared colours (every temperature) opens in them. A stream that is a picture, or shows classes with their own colours, has no palette to change: its button is hatched, and pointing at it says why. It still opens, for the transparency.
• Transparency, at the foot of that window beside Done: drag it from fully opaque (left, 0 %) to fully transparent (right, 100 %) to see through the stream to what is under it. With the keyboard, ← and → move it 5 % at a time. A stream starts opaque each time it is put on.

The green track is labelled with the dataset, whether streams play over it or not. It has a lock in the grip's place and its own palette button, which changes the dataset's colours (the same as Tools → View) and its transparency: the Earth shows through it. At the right of its label:

• the eye hides the dataset on the globe and leaves the streams over the Earth (press it again to show it; it keeps its transparency). While it is hidden, the pointer gives only the place, not a value;
• the ✕ closes the dataset and every stream at once, back to the plain Earth. A line at the foot of the screen says what closed, with Undo for a few seconds: it puts back the dataset at its date, its colours, its streams in their order and every transparency and eye. In a headset the dock says what closed (there is no Undo there).

In a meeting, the presenter's transparencies and eyes reach everyone, and only the presenter can change them. A Khipu step records them too.

On the date track, green fills up to the date shown and the thin lines mark dates (labelled where there is room). Coloured bands show stretches of the dataset that are not new measurements:

• amber: no new data came in, so the last good frame is repeated;
• red: missing frames;
• blue: frames that were estimated or computed between two measured ones.

The date that shows when you point at the track says so too: "no data", "repeated frame" or "estimated". On a yellow track, "no data from this stream" marks the hatched part.

Dates and information

• The date the globe shows is at the bottom centre.
• A stream's dates are in UTC (world time) and only as precise as its frames: a yearly dataset shows the year (2075), a monthly one the month (Aug 2003), a daily one the day, and an hourly one the day and time. Each monthly or yearly frame is its own calendar month or year, so pointing at a month on the date track names that month, and a click, the arrow keys or a lesson's saved date go to that month's frame.
• The information panel (bottom left) says what the dataset is and who made it. Turn it off in Tools → More → Display → Dataset info.

The value under the pointer

On a computer, move the mouse over the globe. A green box at the top centre of the globe shows where you are (it moves with the globe when Browse or Tools push it aside), for example 12.3° N, 45.6° W. On datasets that carry measured values it also shows the value there, for example 23.4 °C, or No data. Some datasets add what kind of value it is: IMERG precipitation says 0.8 mm/hr · rain or 0.1 mm/hr · snow. A dataset whose errors were measured (your own data, for now) shows the value with its ±, for example 12.35 ± 0.18 m s-1: 99 % of places are within that of the true value, and the value is rounded to what the ± allows. The pins and Analyze show the same ±. On phones and tablets use pins instead.

The legend and colours

The legend explains the colours. It sits at the bottom right of each globe; with two or four globes it rises above the information card, the chatbot's button and the playback controls when it would cover them. On datasets that carry values it is a live colour bar, with the values under it and the units to its right, the same one Tools → View shows, so it always matches the globe (IMERG precipitation shows two bars on one scale, rain and snow, because snow is drawn in its own colours); tap it (Tap to adjust colours) to open Tools → View, where the colours are set (see View). A dataset made of classes, such as land use, lists each class with its colour instead. Other datasets show the legend their publisher made, if there is one; tap it to enlarge it. On a dataset with reference lines (such as the Paris Agreement's 1.5 °C), each line is a dashed mark across the bar, named under it (see Reading values).

It stays in view. Opening Browse, Tools, Analyze, the Studio or a lesson slides the globe aside, but not the legend: it keeps its place on the screen and moves only as far as it must to stay beside the open panels, never under one or off the edge. A legend in its usual corner steps left beside the panels; one you have left in the middle of the screen stays where it is. The only way it leaves the screen is when you close it (below).

Close the legend and bring it back: the small ✕ on the legend's top edge closes it, and it flies into Tools → View, where it waits at the foot of the tab under Legend. You can also drag the legend onto the Tools panel or the Tools button to put it there. To bring it back, press ⇱ in its corner, or drag it out of the panel and let go where you want it on the globe (on a phone, drag it by ⇱). With two or four globes, all their legends go and come back together. Tools → More → Display → Legend does the same as a switch. The app remembers a closed legend on that browser.

Move or resize the legend: drag it anywhere on its globe, or drag its bottom-right corner to make it bigger (the text grows with it, which helps on a projector). A tap without dragging still does what it did before. Double-click the corner to put it back in its usual place and size. With the keyboard, the arrow keys move a selected legend and Ctrl with the arrows resizes it. Each globe remembers where you left its legend, on that browser.

Changing colours never changes the values the app reports.

Shapes drawn on the globe

Some datasets draw shapes on the globe themselves, instead of painting it: points, lines, areas and tracks. Earthquakes are the first. Each quake is a circle at the place it started: it grows as the playback date passes its time, then fades, slower for bigger quakes, and quakes of magnitude 6 and above send out ripples. The size gives the magnitude and the colour the depth. While playback is paused, or after you move the date, the globe shows all of that day's quakes at full size.

Earthquakes since 1960 work the same way, a year every second: each quake of magnitude 5 and above appears on the date it struck, quakes of magnitude 7 and above send out ripples, and those of 8 and above carry a small box with their magnitude and name, such as "M9.1 · 2011 Great Tohoku Earthquake, Japan". Paused, or after you move the date, the globe shows the whole year. The panel also gives the magnitude type, since older quakes were measured on different scales.

Tropical cyclones are tracks: each storm's path over the last 30 days, drawn up to the playback date and coloured by its Saffir-Simpson category at each point. A storm still being tracked has a disc at its position and, once it has a name, a small box beside the disc with its name and maximum sustained wind, such as "SIMON 250 km/h". The box takes the colour of the storm's category at that moment, so it changes as the storm strengthens or weakens. A depression without a name yet has a disc but no box. When a storm ends, its disc and box go, and its track stays until it is 30 days old.

For storms in the Atlantic and the eastern and central Pacific, the US National Hurricane Center's forecast cone is drawn as a pale area ahead of the storm, with a thin white line through it for the forecast track. Each cone is the one issued in that advisory and stays until the next one replaces it; it shows where the centre may go, not how far the wind reaches.

Tropical Cyclone Tracks since 1950 plays the storms of each year, a year every second: each track draws in as the storm moves, its disc and name box show while it is active, and the track fades about two months after the storm ends, so each season builds up and then clears.

Disaster alerts (GDACS) carry a box with a short name on Orange and Red alerts, such as "Eruption Taal", and live earthquakes of magnitude 6 and above carry their magnitude and place.

• Their legend shows the colour scale and, for points, a size key: for earthquakes, circles at magnitude 3, 5 and 7; for tropical cyclones, the seven Saffir-Simpson colours with their wind speeds. It sits where the colour bar sits and behaves the same way: it stays in view, closes with its ✕ and can be moved.
• What a shape is: click or tap a shape for a small panel with its name, its values (an earthquake's magnitude, depth, time in UTC and place; a storm's wind at the playback date) and, when the publisher gives one, a link to the source's own page about it.
• Speeds are in km/h in the boxes, the panel and the legend, whatever units the publisher gives them in (cyclone winds come in m/s). Click or tap elsewhere to close it.
• Colours: the shapes keep the colours their publisher gave them; Tools → View does not change them.
• The value under the pointer and pins still read the dataset's values, as before.
• On several globes each globe draws its own dataset's shapes.
• In the headset the shapes lie on the globe, and stay the same size on screen however far away you stand; a storm's box faces you and is drawn larger, to be read in the headset. Point at one and pull the trigger: its panel opens beside the globe. Pulling the trigger on the globe away from any shape closes it. On a phone's AR globe, tap a shape.
• In Studio videos the shapes play as they do on screen, and the video's legend is theirs.

The Tools panel

Press Tools (the sliders icon, bottom right). On a computer the panel stays open beside the globe until you close it with ✕, Tools or Esc. It reopens on the tab you used last.

If your plan lets you host meetings, Start a meeting… is at the top (see Meetings).

Layers

• Two cards: Overlay holds two layers (0/2 to 2/2); Real time holds four on a computer (0/4 to 4/4) and two on a phone, tablet or Quest. Each overlay is another video playing at once: if playback stutters, take one off. Press a card to see its choices with pictures; None is first. Point at a card's title (or tap it) to read what the card is for.
  • There is no basemap to choose: under the data is always the Earth from NASA's satellite pictures (Blue Marble by day, Black Marble at night, served by NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services, GIBS), seen wherever the data is see-through. Credits… names it.
  • Overlay: lines or names on top of the data: borders, coastlines, the latitude and longitude grid, and NOAA's teaching overlays (Plate Boundaries, Plate Names, Rivers, Ocean, Continent, Country, Capital and City Names, Continent Borders, Time Zones, Roads, Railroads). Pick an overlay to add it, pick it again to take it off; with two on, a third replaces the first one you added, and None takes them all off. The second is drawn on top of the first. NOAA's overlays start in their own colours; each overlay that is on has its own colour choice under the card (Overlay colour, or Colour of and its name when there are two): White, Black or Original colours.
  • Real time: live streams played over the dataset, on the same date. Pick a stream to add it, pick it again to take it off; when the card is full, a new one replaces the first one you added. The first sits lower on the globe, the second above it. The list has a search field and is grouped by topic (Atmosphere, Ocean & water, Climate, Fire & air quality, Land & life, People), A to Z inside each. While you search, streams whose name starts with what you typed come first, and so does their topic. Under each stream are its dates, with a small bar: yellow for the stream, a green outline for the dataset on the globe, so you can see how much they overlap. Streams with no dates in common with the dataset are not listed; a note under the list says how many. Point at a stream to see its package. If the stream does not cover the date on screen, the card says so and hides it until the dates meet.

Some datasets come with a layer already chosen; you can change it. Country borders are an overlay: streams that cover the whole Earth with colour get them automatically, and so does any stream that comes with borders listed, such as climate-zone maps or sea-level and sea-ice projections. The Sun and other worlds (the Moon, Mars, Io...) start bare: no borders, no other layer and no Earth underneath, though you can still add a layer yourself. You can choose them, or None, in the Overlay card.

Data

The Data tab is for reading values:

• Pins and the graph: see Reading values.
• Measure: Line, Box, and Statistics over a region you pick (the whole globe, the tropics, either hemisphere, the Arctic, the Antarctic, or what you can see). See Analyze.
• Research record and Lab space (research plans): see Recording a research session and Lab space.
• Clear pins, lines and boxes removes everything put on the globe: your pins, the line, the box, and contour lines, including pins the chatbot placed.

View

• Colours (on datasets that carry values):

  • the colour bar as the globe draws it;
  • Palette: Original, Viridis, Magma, Inferno, Plasma, Cividis, Turbo, Cool–warm or Grayscale;
  • Invert palette: runs the palette the other way round; see-through areas stay as they are;
  • Colour limits: type the lowest and highest value the palette spans, in the dataset's units. Values beyond them take the end colours, and the colour bar then says so at that end ("≤ −25", "≥ 50"). The limits may go past the values the dataset holds. Press Enter or click away to apply;
  • Reset colours goes back to the dataset's own colours, or to its shared colours (below).
  • Reference lines (on datasets that have them, such as the Paris Agreement's 1.5 °C on the temperature projections): shows or hides the dashed lines on the pin graph and their marks on the legend (see Reading values).

• Transparency (any dataset, a picture too): drag it from opaque (0 %) to fully transparent (100 %) to see the Earth through the dataset, and Hide the dataset on the globe hides it altogether (the same as the eye on its date track). Each dataset starts opaque; this is not kept for next time.

  Your colours are kept for each dataset. Change the palette, its direction or the limits of a dataset and it opens that way next time, on this browser and, when you are signed in, on every device you sign in on. Each dataset keeps its own colours; nothing carries over to the next dataset you load. Reset colours forgets your change for that dataset.

  Shared colours. Datasets that measure the same thing open in the same colours, so they can be compared at a glance: every temperature of the air, the sea surface and the land surface opens in Turbo from −25 to 50 °C (the same colour is the same temperature on all of them), and View says so under the colour bar. Changes and anomalies (such as SST Anomaly or the projected changes) and Heat Stress (UTCI) keep their own colours. On several globes, each globe shows its own dataset's colours. A dataset that shows classes, such as rain or snow, keeps its class colours, and View lists them. Colours set here are also used when you enter VR or AR.

• Layout: one globe, two side by side, two stacked, or four (see Comparing).

• Sun glint: how bright the sun's reflection on the sea is (None, Default, Comfortable).

More

• Display: Labels, 3D terrain, Dataset info and Legend, each on or off. (Spinning the globe is the ⟳ button under Help.)
• UI size: the size of the buttons and text (Compact, Default, Comfortable).
• Language: Català, English or Español (also in the account menu; see the note in Help).
• About: Credits… (where the pictures and data come from), Privacy settings… and About AYNI XR.
• User manual: this manual.

Your plan

The line at the foot of the panel shows your plan: Not signed in with Sign in, Plan: Free with See the plans, or your plan's name with Your plan.

Reading values: pins and the graph

Many live and recorded streams carry real measurements in their colours. On those, you can pin places and follow their values through time.

Reading values is part of the AYNI XR plans, from Plus up: pins and the graph, Measure, the value under the pointer and the value in the headset. Without one, the Data tab says so and offers See the plans. Plus reads values with two pins and their graph; Line, Box and the CSV downloads come with the Education, Research and other plans.

1. Load a dataset, open Tools, and choose the Data tab.
2. Press Pin on globe. Its box ticks and the counter shows how many pins are down (up to 6; 2 with Plus).
3. Click (or tap) the globe where you want to measure. A coloured pin appears there.
4. Drag a pin to move it.

Each pin has a row with its colour, its value with units, and its place. The value also shows beside the pin on the globe, in a small box edged in the pin's colour: up and to the right of a pin in the northern hemisphere, down and to the left of one in the southern, so it never covers the data at the pin. It follows the globe as it plays, and hides while the pin is round the back. The headset and the phone in AR show it the same way. × removes that pin. When you have finished pinning, press Pin on globe again to turn it off.

Rename a pin: click its name (the pencil beside it shows it can be changed), type a name of up to 32 characters, such as Lima or Buoy 4, and press Enter, or click elsewhere. Esc leaves it as it was, and an empty name gives the pin its own name back (Pin 2, Highest). The name is the pin's everywhere: in the list, on the graph, in the CSV, on the globe (in front of its value) and in the headset, on a phone in AR, in a Lab space and in a Khipu you record (as the pin's note). It stays when you move the pin.

• Mark highest & lowest drops two pins on the highest and lowest values in the frame on screen.
• Clear all removes every pin.

The graph under the pins draws one line per pin across the dataset's whole time span, in the pin's colour, on a shared scale. It fills in as the dataset plays, and says how much has been read so far. Press play, or drag through the dates, to complete it faster. The thin strips under the graph show which frames each pin has read; a faint mark means that frame had no data at that place, such as land on an ocean dataset. Every frame a pin reads is kept: each time the dataset loops, the graph only adds the frames it had not read yet, and each value is read from the frame on the globe at that moment, so the line never changes shape between laps. On a long dataset, with more frames than the graph has points across, each point is the average of the frames read there, and the line gets more precise with every lap.

Reference lines. Some datasets come with a boundary that gives their values a meaning, drawn as a dashed line across the graph and named at its right end:

• the climate projections of surface temperature change (CMIP6, every scenario) show 1.5 °C, the Paris Agreement's goal, and 2 °C, its upper limit. Both are limits on the global average warming since 1850–1900, not on one place: land and the Arctic warm faster than the average, so a pin there can pass a line long before the world does;
• the projections of aragonite saturation (CMIP6) show Ω = 1: below it, seawater dissolves aragonite, the mineral of corals, pteropods and many shells. (The planetary boundary for ocean acidification is set higher, at 80 % of the pre-industrial saturation.)

Under the graph, Reference lines turns them on and off, with each line named in full beside it (hold the pointer over a name for what it means). When a line is far from your pins' values, the graph keeps its scale for the data and the name says (above the graph) or (below the graph). While you compare with a baseline, the graph shows changes, so the lines are left out. The same switch is in Tools → View, and in the headset's View page; it hides the lines everywhere, on the graph and on the legend, and the app remembers it on that browser.

Statistics on the pins (Research and Situation Room plans): under the graph of a dataset with dates, Trend, Emergence and Correlation test the pins' series. Let the dataset play to the end first: a test on part of the window says so. On other plans the buttons carry a lock and open the plans.

• Trend gives each pin a verdict and the numbers behind it. Two tests are run: least squares (the slope per decade with its 95 % interval) and Mann–Kendall with Sen's slope, the test climate papers use, drawn as a dashed line on the graph. The verdict says rising or falling only when both find a trend at 5 % in the same direction, and says when they disagree. Neighbouring values in a climate series are alike, so the intervals and p-values allow for it, and the panel says how many of the values are really independent. It warns when the values are less than a year apart (seasons make a trend look stronger), when there are few independent values, and when many values are equal.
• Emergence (a series of at least 30 years, with no more than one value a year) gives the year each pin's values leave the natural range of a baseline period for good: when the 10-year mean around it stays more than twice the baseline's year-to-year variation away from the baseline's mean (Hawkins and Sutton 2012). The baseline period is shaded on the graph and can be changed. The variation comes from the baseline itself, after its own trend is taken out. A multi-model mean or median (such as the CMIP6 projections) varies far less from year to year than the real climate, so its emergence comes too early: the panel says so, and you can type a variation taken from observations or single model runs in the σ box.
• Correlation (two pins or more) gives Pearson's r and Spearman's ρ for each pair, the same without their trends (two series that both rise correlate for that reason alone), and the delay at which they agree most, corrected for trying several delays. A correlation does not show cause.

The results are added to Download CSV with every number shown and the method of each.

A green line on the graph marks the date the globe is showing and moves as the dataset plays, so you can still see where you are once the graph is filled in. Point at the graph to see a dashed line with the date under it on its right (in the window over the globe, also each pin's value there), and Click to play from here on its left; click to play from that date. Near either edge the two swap sides or stack, so neither covers the other. On a touch screen, tap.

Pause, then point at the graph to read the past on the globe: while the dataset is paused, the value beside each pin on the globe follows the pointer, showing that pin's value at the date under it (with a dashed edge, since the globe's colours still show the paused frame). Move off the graph, or press play, and the pins show the frame on the globe again.

Take the graph out onto the globe to see it bigger:

• Drag the graph out of the panel and let go anywhere over the globe. On a touch screen, drag it by its ⇱ button in the top corner. Or press ⇱ to pop it out to where it was last.
• On the globe it is a window of its own. Drag its title bar to move it, and drag its bottom-right corner to resize it. It keeps filling in as the dataset plays, with each pin's latest value under it.
• To put it back, press ✕ or Back to Tools (the button beside ✕), press Esc, or drag it onto the Tools panel or the Tools button. Bring it back in the Data tab does the same.
• With the keyboard: on ⠿ (left of its title) the arrow keys move it; on the resize corner they resize it. Hold Shift for bigger steps.
• On a phone, the Tools panel steps aside while you place the graph.

The next time you take it out, it returns to the place and size you left it in, on that browser.

Download the values: Download CSV under the graph (or the ⤓ button in its window) saves the pins' values as a CSV file for a spreadsheet: one row per date of the dataset, one column per pin, with the dataset, the units and each pin's place at the top, then where the data came from (its credit, sources and licences, and a link back to the view; see Citing a view). The dates are in UTC and as precise as the dataset: 2075 for a yearly one, 2003-08 for a monthly one, the full date and time for an hourly one. A blank cell is a date the dataset has not played yet; no_data means it played and there was nothing measured there.

If the tab says the dataset is a picture, its colours carry no numbers, so pins cannot read it. Choose a live or recorded stream instead.

Analyze: statistics, lines and boxes

The Measure buttons in Tools → Data measure the frame on screen, on every dataset that carries values: the live and recorded streams and the catalogue's older value-carrying datasets. The results open in the Analyze panel.

Analyze in the bar at the bottom (beside Browse and Tools) opens the panel in one click, on the region last chosen beside Statistics, and closes it again. It is there on the plans with whole-region statistics (Research and Education) whenever the dataset on screen carries values.

On a computer Analyze is a side panel like Browse and Tools: it slides in from the edge, beside whichever of them is open, and the globe glides to the middle of the space left, with Help and the account button stepping aside. If the window is too narrow for all of them, the panel opened earliest closes.

The panel has five tabs under the region picker, so it never becomes one long column (the arrow keys move between them, and it opens on the tab you used last; Statistics in Tools always opens on Statistics, Line on Profiles):

• Statistics: the numbers, the histogram, the download and Cite this view.

• Profiles: the profile by latitude, the line's profile and the line over time.

• Contours: contour lines at the legend's values.

• Baseline: hold a frame and read others against it (see below).

• Compare: the dataset minus a real-time overlay (see below).

• Line: click where the line starts, then where it ends. You get the values along it and its length. Drag either end to move it.

• Box: click one corner, then the opposite one. The statistics cover that box, outlined on the globe. Drag a corner to change it.

• Statistics: pick a region and press Statistics.

• Region (also in the panel): the Whole globe; the Tropics, Northern or Southern hemisphere, Arctic or Antarctic; What I can see; The box you drew; or a continent, ocean or country.

• Statistics: lowest, highest, mean, median, 10th and 90th percentiles, spread and the area with data, with a histogram. Every value is area-weighted.

• By latitude: the average in each band of latitude.

• Where the line falls: contour lines at the legend's values, which you can outline on the globe.

Each result can be saved as a CSV file for a spreadsheet: Download CSV under the statistics (with the full distribution of values), Download the line as CSV under a line, Download the profile as CSV under By latitude. Each file says what it is of (the dataset, the region, the units) and is named after it, for example ayni-stats-zone-tropics-…-2026-10-04.csv. Its first rows also say where the data came from: the dataset's id, the frame's date and time, a link that reopens the view, the data's credit, its sources and their licences, and a ready-made citation. Cite this view under the results opens the citation (see Citing a view).

The line over time (Hovmöller diagram)

With a Research or Situation Room plan, Line over time (Hovmöller) under the line in the Profiles tab records how the values along your line change as the dataset plays. There is nothing to start: once the line is drawn, each frame the globe shows becomes a row, the way pins fill their graph. Play the dataset (or move through it) and the diagram fills in; frames that play too fast to be read stay empty until the next time round.

• Reading it: distance along the line runs across (from the start to the end of your line, both named by latitude and longitude); time runs downward, the first frame at the top, as in Hovmöller's own diagrams (1949). The colours are the dataset's own, with a colour bar. Dark rows have not been played yet; grey cells had no data.
• Values: point at the diagram, or use the arrow keys after tabbing to it, to read the distance, date and value of a cell. Click a row, or press Enter, to play from that frame. A green line marks the frame on the globe.
• "N of M frames recorded" says how much of the dataset's time is in it. Each row is one frame of the dataset; playing a frame again replaces its row. A dataset with more than 2,048 frames shares rows, and the panel says so.
• The change from a baseline: with a frame held as a baseline (see below), Values · Change from baseline shows now minus the baseline at each point, blue for a decrease and red for an increase, on a range fixed when you choose it. With a period held as the baseline, each row is compared with the average of its own frame's month (or month and hours, for data a few hours apart), so a July row is read against July; σ change then shows each cell in units of that month's variation (−3σ to +3σ).
• Downloads: Download the diagram as CSV gives one row per frame recorded and one column per point, with rows above them for each point's distance, latitude and longitude, and where the data came from; Download the diagram as PNG saves the picture with its axes, colour bar and citation.
• Limits: the points are one per grid cell the line crosses, so anything narrower is not resolved, and the values have the data's 8-bit steps; the panel gives both.
• Start again empties it. Clearing the line, Clear pins, lines and boxes, another dataset or closing the panel ends it. With other plans the button shows a lock that opens the plans.

Comparing with a baseline

With a Research or Situation Room plan, Hold as baseline in the Baseline tab keeps this frame's numbers. Play or move to another frame, or open another dataset in the same units on the same grid, and every statistic shows how much it changed (for example +0.097 °C vs baseline). The By latitude chart draws the baseline as a dashed line and names the band that changed most.

• A change smaller than one step of the data's resolution says no change beyond the data's resolution: it is not a real difference.
• The baseline only compares the same area: choose another region, or move the camera while comparing What I can see, and the panel says which region the baseline covers instead.
• Hold this frame instead replaces it; Clear baseline (or Clear pins, lines and boxes) removes it. Closing the panel keeps it.
• The CSV files then carry baseline and difference columns, and which frame the baseline was.

The change on the globe. Under the baseline, On the globe draws the change over the whole dataset, on the globe itself:

• Change: now minus the baseline, in the dataset's units. Use it for anything that can be zero or negative, such as a temperature in °C or an anomaly.
• % change: the change as a percentage of the baseline. It suits quantities whose zero means none, such as rain, smoke or ice cover (4 mm to 6 mm is +50 %). For a dataset that goes below zero (an anomaly or a change, such as the projected temperature changes) or a temperature in °C or °F, the panel adds a caution: their zero is arbitrary, so a percentage depends on where zero sits. Climate studies give those as a change in their units, or in units of the baseline's year-to-year variation (σ).
• Blue is a decrease, red an increase and white no change; the range is the same either side of zero, so its colours can be compared. The legend gives the range.
• Grey means there is data, but no meaningful change: only one of the two frames has data there (ice that melted, for example), or, for a percentage, the baseline is too close to zero to divide by. The panel gives the exact threshold, how many cells it greys and what share of the map: the larger of two of the data's steps (a baseline that small is mostly rounding) and 2 % of the baseline's typical size (its 95th percentile). A pin there reads no % with the same threshold. Where neither frame has data the Earth shows through.
• Update: While playing (the default) has the graphics card draw the change on every frame, so you can watch it grow as the years play. When paused draws it once playback stops and hides it while playing, which is lighter on older computers and phones. If a graphics card cannot draw it while playing, the panel says so and draws it when paused. The choice is remembered on this device.
• The colour range is fixed when you choose Change or % change, so a colour means the same amount in every frame. Choosing the mode again sets it from the frame on screen.
• Everything reads what the globe shows. While the change is on, the value under the pointer, the pins, their graph and their CSV file give the change from the baseline at each place ("+0.74 °C vs baseline", or "−12 % vs baseline"), and the legend on the globe is the change's. Choose Off and they show the dataset's values again; the pins keep everything they have read.
• It works with another dataset on the same grid and in the same units, such as two emissions scenarios in the same year. Datasets made of classes (rain or snow) have no change to show. Off, Clear baseline or closing the panel takes it away.

A period as the baseline (a climatology). At the top of the Baseline tab, choose A period instead of One frame to compare with the average of many years, the way climate scientists do. It works on the streams that have a time axis of frames.

• The period starts at 1991–2020, the standard climate normal of the World Meteorological Organization, cut to the years the dataset has. A dataset that starts later (a projection from 2015) gets its first 30 years; one shorter than 30 years, all of it. Type other years in From and to. When only part of 1991–2020 is in the dataset but it has 30 years in all, the panel says a full 30-year period is possible.
• Monthly data is compared month by month: a January with the average of the Januaries, a July with the Julys, so the seasons do not show up as change. The month of each frame is counted from the first frame, so a date that drifts by a day or two never puts a frame in the wrong month. Yearly data is compared with the average of its years. Daily data is compared with the average of its calendar month. Data a few hours apart (up to eight frames a day) is compared with the same month at the same hours of the day, so the daily cycle does not show up as change. A real-time stream that covers less than two years, or data more than eight frames a day, is compared with the average of its whole window, which includes the daily cycle, and has no σ change.
• Press Start reading, then play the dataset through the period: every frame shown is read once ("214 of 360 frames read"). Read the missing frames pauses playback and steps through the frames still missing. Frames the publisher filled, interpolated or estimated are not read and count as missing; the panel says how many. Nothing is compared until every frame of the period has been read, or until you press Use the frames read, which appears once every month has 80 % of its frames. The baseline then stays as it is while you use it. A period with a month seen only once is refused (hold one frame instead).
• Once complete, the change on the globe, the pointer and the pins read each frame against its own month; the panel says which month. Under the statistics, Against the climatology gives the mean change, the mean σ change and the share of the area beyond ±2σ, place by place where both the frame and the climatology have data. A frame's minimum, maximum or percentiles are not compared with a field of averages. The latitude chart draws the climatology's average over the same places, dashed.
• σ change (with a period of at least 10 years) shows the change in units of that month's spread: the standard deviation over the period after its own straight-line trend is removed (after Hawkins and Sutton 2012), never smaller than one step of the data. For monthly and yearly data that is the year-to-year spread; for daily and sub-daily data it is the spread of all that month's values, day to day and year to year. A place needs 10 values of its own. The colours span ±3σ in every frame. For a roughly bell-shaped variable, beyond 2σ happens in about 1 year in 20 and beyond 3σ in about 1 in 400. For a temperature or an anomaly it is the comparison climate studies use; % change against a period's average also greys far fewer places than against one frame.
• σ also contains the 8-bit rounding and the video's compression noise. Where the real spread is smaller than one step of the data, σ is raised to one step and the panel counts those places: there σ change understates how unusual a value is.
• Shorter than 30 years, the panel cautions that the average and σ are less steady. A place needs data in at least 80 % of the period's frames to have an average (the WMO's guideline; its rule on consecutive missing years is not applied).
• The climatology takes up to 256 MB of memory while it is being read. A very large dataset is kept on every second (or third) cell each way, the frame is read at the same cells, and the panel says so; pins then compare their own place with their cell.
• The CSV files name the period (baseline_period), the frames read and skipped, the grouping, the years per month, the share of σ raised to one step, the degrees of freedom and the method; the statistics file gives the comparison as mean_change, mean_sigma_change and share_beyond_2_sigma. The pins' file says its values are the change from the climatology and gives the climatology's average and σ beside each pin.
• Clear baseline, Clear pins, lines and boxes or holding one frame removes the period; closing the panel keeps it, and reading goes on while the panel is closed.

Statistics over a whole region (the globe, a band of latitude, a continent, what you can see) come with the Research and Education plans. With the other plans (Situation Room, Plus, Media, Venue), Measure has Line and Box: draw a box and the panel gives its full statistics. The Analyze downloads come with every plan except Education, which has the pins' Download CSV.

The area over a threshold

With a Research or Situation Room plan, Area over a threshold at the bottom of the Statistics tab measures how much of the region is above (or below) a value: how much of the ocean is warmer than 28 °C, how much of a country is under smoke above the unhealthy line. Choose Above or Below and type the value; the box suggests the region's 90th percentile on the frame on screen.

• The numbers: the Area in km², its share Of the area with data, the Cells over (of the cells with data) and the Cells without data, which are left out and counted. "Above" means strictly greater than the value, "Below" strictly less.
• Real areas: each grid cell counts with its true area on the Earth, so a cell near a pole counts for far less than one at the equator. The region is the same set of cells the statistics above use. Nothing is regridded: a cell counts whole, so nothing smaller than one cell is resolved.
• The data's steps: the values are 8-bit, so a cell within one step of the value could be on either side of it. The panel gives the area as a range ("Between … and … once the 8-bit step is allowed for") and how many cells are that close; the step itself is under the section.
• Against a baseline: with a frame or a period held in the Baseline tab, Value · Change · σ change chooses what is compared. Change is now minus the baseline in each cell (for a period, minus the average of the frame's own month, or of its month and hours for data a few hours apart, the month taken from the frame's place on the time axis); σ change (with a period) is that change in units of the period's variation for that month (year to year for monthly data), and starts at 2: places unusual for the time of year. Against a held frame a cell within two steps of the value is counted as either side, against a period within one step (in σ units, one step divided by the cell's σ). When the period's averages were kept at a coarser resolution to save memory, each cell is compared where its average was read, and the panel says so. Each choice keeps its own value. A marine heatwave in the scientific sense (Hobday et al. 2016) also needs the heat to last five days or more; this measures the area in each frame and does not test how long it lasts.
• Through time: on a stream with a time axis of frames, the area is measured in every frame the globe shows as the dataset plays, the way pins fill their graph ("214 of 1,040 frames read"). Read the missing frames pauses playback and steps through the rest (Stop reading stops it). The graph has the same marks as the pins' graph: a green line where playback is, a dashed line and a readout under the pointer, and a click (or Enter, after tabbing to it) plays from that frame; km² or % of the area with data chooses what it draws. Playing a frame again replaces its point. A dataset without a time axis is measured on the frame on screen only. Frames the publisher filled or interpolated are not measured: the status line counts them, and a filled frame on screen is measured but left out of the series.
• Download the series as CSV gives one row per frame read, in time order: its date, the area, its share, the cells over, with data and without, the area with data, the area's low and high, and the cells within one step; the rows above say what the threshold, region and baseline were, how areas are computed, and where the data came from.
• Changing the value, the comparison or the region starts the series again; so do closing the panel, another dataset and Clear pins, lines and boxes. Start again empties it. With other plans the section shows a lock that opens the plans.

Comparing two datasets

With a Research or Situation Room plan, the Compare tab subtracts B from the dataset on the globe (A), place by place, on the same date. Under Compare with, B is A real-time overlay that carries values (chosen in Tools → Layers → Real time) or Another globe when two or four globes are on screen. This is the map papers show for a model against observations, one emissions scenario against another (for example sea ice under SSP5-8.5 minus SSP1-2.6), or a forecast against what happened.

• The same place: both are averaged onto one grid, as coarse as the coarser of the two (the panel gives its cell size), so detail only the finer one resolves does not show as difference. A cell counts where at least half of it has data.
• The same units: B must be in A's units or have a known conversion (mm and inches, °C, K and °F, rain in kg m⁻² s⁻¹, mm/h or mm/day, m/s, km/h and knots, Pa and hPa, ppm and ppb, µg/m³ and mg/m³); the panel says how B was converted. Anything else is refused rather than guessed. For a change or an anomaly a temperature conversion uses no offset (a change of 1 °F is 0.56 °C).
• The same moment: under Frames, Same date needs the two frames within half the coarser time step of each other; the panel names both dates and refuses when they are apart. As shown compares the two frames on screen whatever their dates, and says so ("dates not matched"); the CSV records which was used.
• The same quantity: being in the same units does not make two datasets the same variable (cloud cover and sea ice are both %). The panel warns when the titles name different things, or when one is a change or anomaly and the other a value. Datasets made of classes cannot be compared.
• On the globe: A − B draws the difference, blue where A is lower and red where it is higher, grey where only one has data, and hides the overlay meanwhile. Update: While playing has the graphics card draw it on every frame, from the two frames on screen as they are; When paused draws it for the frame on screen and hides it while playing. Both pictures use the same grid and colours. The value under the pointer, the pins (each against B's value at that pin on each date), their graph and their CSV then read A − B.
• % of B draws (A − B) ÷ B × 100, for amounts whose zero means none, such as rain, a concentration, an optical depth or sea ice. It is not offered for temperatures, changes or anomalies, or anything that goes below zero, and the panel says why. Where B is within a small threshold of zero a percentage would explode, so those places are grey; the panel gives the threshold (two of B's rounding steps, or 2 % of B's typical size, whichever is larger) and how much of the map it greys.
• Side by side: the region chosen at the top of Analyze is read on A and on B: area-weighted mean, median, 10th and 90th percentiles, with A − B (and % of B). Each side is read on its own grid, so the two may cover slightly different places.
• The numbers: over the chosen region, the bias (mean A − B), the root-mean-square difference, the centred RMS difference (what remains once the bias is removed), the pattern correlation (how alike the two maps' shapes are), and each one's mean, all weighted by area on the common grid (and the bias as a % of B's mean, for amounts). Download CSV saves them with what was compared, how B was converted and paired, the common grid, the region side by side, and where both datasets came from.
• Two globes: A is the main globe, the one Analyze reads; to make another globe A, press its number and open Analyze again. B is one of the other globes. The globes keep one date, streams included, so B is normally on A's date already; if it is not (a stream still loading, or one that has no frame for that date), the panel says so and offers Show globe 2 at … to move it there.
• Limits: a difference smaller than the data's rounding (given in the panel) is not real, and no significance test is made for the difference between two whole maps, because neighbouring places are not independent.

Recording a research session

With a Research or Situation Room plan, Tools → Data → Record this session keeps a record of your work: what you looked at, in order, with every number you read and every file you exported. It is the record behind a figure, kept with a study or sent with a paper. Nothing is recorded until you switch it on; while it records, a red Recording mark shows at the top of the screen. Press it, or Records…, to open the Research record panel. Other plans with the data tools see the button with a lock, which opens the plans.

• What it keeps: each dataset you open; each view you stop on for a moment (paused, the camera still), as a step with its link and its citation, so the step reopens exactly; and, on each step, the pins you place and the values they read, statistics with their numbers and method, a baseline you hold (a frame, or a period and how many of its frames were read), what the globe shows (values, change, % change, σ change), Trend, Emergence and Correlation results, comparisons (with an overlay or another globe, how the frames were paired and what the globe shows), Line over time diagrams, figures you download (their settings and what the colour bar shows), the methods paragraph when you copy or download it, areas over a threshold (the definition, the frame on screen and a summary of the series), citations copied, and every file you export with its name and SHA-256 fingerprint. CSV files you export while recording travel with the record (up to eight).
• The chatbot's numbers: while a record is already running, numbers Ayni Chatbot works out for you (a trend, a comparison, an area over a threshold, a value it reads) go in as steps marked (via the chatbot). The chatbot never starts, saves or shares a record, and what you write to it is never kept.
• What it does not keep: while playing, frames passing by are not steps. It never keeps the conversation with the chatbot, voice or camera. Put my name on the record is off: the record is anonymous unless you tick it, and then your account's name goes on every entry.
• Save to my account keeps it on your account until your licence ends plus 30 days; saving again replaces it. Download (.zip) saves the record (.kpu), its CSV files and a README. Start a new record (pressed twice) empties it. A record holds up to 120 views and 400 entries.
• Saved research records lists them, with the date each is kept until: Open, Download, Delete (pressed twice).
• Opening one walks its steps in order with the numbers as they were recorded. It first says whether the record is unchanged since it was made (its content hash and the chain linking its entries) and whether its CSV files match their fingerprints. Open this view, Previous view and Next view put the step back on the globe (dataset, date, camera, layers) and read its pins' values and its statistics again: "the same now", or the value now with a note that the data has changed since it was recorded (a stream that was reprocessed, a release that moved on). A dataset that is no longer available, or not in your plan, keeps its numbers in the record.
• Records are not signed yet; AYNI's signature comes later.

Lab space: sharing with your lab

With a Lab or Department plan (or a Situation Room team, or a custom licence with the data and research tools on several seats), Tools → Data → Open Lab space shares work between everyone who holds a seat of the same licence. Researcher (one seat), Plus and the other plans with the data tools see the button with a lock, which opens the plans.

• Share: type a title and a note if you want them (a title is made for you otherwise), then press Share this view (the dataset, date, camera and layers on the globe), Share these pins (up to six, with their names), Share the baseline (the frame or the period you hold in Analyze), or pick one of your saved research records and press Share the record. A shared baseline is its definition (the dataset, the frame or the years, and the region), not its numbers. A record you made with your name on it asks first: Share without names (offered first) or Share with my name; copies others make carry no name.
• Open: a view loads its dataset at its date, place and layers; pins replace the pins on your globe; a baseline opens its view, then Analyze holds the same frame over the same region, or starts reading the period, so the numbers are measured again from the data on your screen (play the period through, or press Read the missing frames); a record opens in the Research record panel, read-only, to walk its steps.
• Copy link copies a shared view's link. Copy as mine makes your own copy, which stays if its author deletes theirs or leaves the lab. Edit (your own) changes the title and note. Delete (pressed twice) removes your own; the lab's owner can delete anything.
• The owner is the first member who still holds a seat, or whoever the owner hands the role to. The owner sees Members holding a seat (names and when each joined, the new ones marked), a note in Tools when someone new joins, Make owner beside each member and Give up being the owner (each pressed twice). Anyone with the licence key can take a seat: if someone should not be there, free their seat in the licence. An owner who stops holding a seat does not get the role back on returning; the new owner can hand it back.
• Who sees it: everyone who holds a seat of the licence now, with the name of whoever shared it. When you give back your seat you lose access at once. Someone whose seat was freed while they stay away is still listed and named until their licence check runs out (at most 14 days); then what they shared stays as "a former member"'s.
• How long: while the licence runs and 30 days after. In those 30 days you can open, download and delete, but not share. Deleting your account deletes what you shared (if Lab space cannot be reached at that moment, the account is kept and you are asked to try again).
• Limits: 500 items and 64 MB per lab; a record up to 2 MB with its CSV files.

Comparing datasets on several globes

In Tools → View → Layout, choose two globes (side by side or stacked) or four. Or, on any dataset card in Browse, open the ⋯ menu and choose Open beside: the dataset opens on a second globe next to the one shown.

Each globe has a row at its top-left corner:

• Its number. Press it to make that globe the main one: its date and transport are the ones the others follow.
• Its dataset, or + Add a dataset when it is empty. Press it and Browse opens loading into that globe; a banner says so, and each card says whether it shares dates with globe 1. Press Back to globe 1 on the banner to load into the main globe instead.
• Its date rule (on every globe but the main one): how its date follows globe 1. Same date is the default. Choose 30 years earlier and the same dataset shows the same month thirty years before; 3 months later turns a monthly dataset into a season beside the one shown. Another offset takes any number of days, months or years; A fixed date holds the globe on one date whatever globe 1 does.
• The date it shows, so you never have to guess which year is beside which.

What follows from that:

• Turning one globe turns them all.
• Playback follows the real date on globe 1; every other globe follows it through its rule. A globe with no data for its date is dimmed.
• Streams follow frame by frame: two yearly streams show the same year; a monthly stream beside a yearly one shows a month of that year, and the yearly one shows the year of the month beside it. Past a stream's first or last frame it holds that frame and is dimmed.
• Each globe keeps its own layers. Tools → Layers shows and changes the layers of the main globe (the one whose number is lit): its overlays and borders, and its real-time streams. To give globe 2 a stream of its own, press its number and pick the stream in Tools → Layers; press globe 1's number to go back, and each keeps what it had. A stream on another globe follows that globe's date. Your device can play a few real-time streams at once (four on a computer, two on a phone or headset), shared by all the globes.
• Pins are shared. A pin from the Data tab is drawn on every globe, each with that globe's own reading beside it, and you can drop a pin on any globe. The graph draws the other globes' readings as dashed lines in the pin's colour, named like Lima · globe 2 (−30 yr), against globe 1's dates, so "then" sits over "now". The CSV carries them as extra rows with a note saying what they are.
• Every globe reads under the pointer. Move the pointer over any globe and the box under that globe's row shows the place (latitude and longitude) and, for a dataset that carries its values, the value on that globe. With one globe the box is at the top centre of the screen.
• The address keeps the globes. The link you copy carries each globe's dataset and date rule, so it opens the same comparison for whoever you send it to (within their plan's globes).
• A Khipu step can set the globes too, and Record a Khipu records them.
• Four globes need a large enough screen; phones show two at most, stacked when held upright. On a narrow globe the row shows the number, the date rule and the date; the dataset's title is in the information card.
• A free account and Plus show one globe. Education plans show up to two, for then-and-now comparisons; four come with the Research, Media and Situation Room plans.

An output window for a projector

Tools → More → Open an output window opens a second browser window with the globes alone: their number rows, legends and the date, and no buttons. Drag it to the projector or the second screen and press F11 for full screen. Everything you do in the first window shows there: the dataset, playback, turning, the layers, several globes and their date rules, a Khipu's captions. The browser may ask you to allow pop-ups the first time.

In a meeting the output window joins the meeting as one more follower, so it shows what everyone sees, drivers' globes included.

A sphere output (Science On a Sphere)

Tools → More → Open a sphere output (2:1) opens a window that shows the main globe as one flat picture of the whole Earth, twice as wide as it is tall (2048 × 1024): the format Science On a Sphere and other spherical displays play. It has the globe's own colours, borders and layers, and the pins from the Data tab, and it follows the first window as an output window does: the dataset, the date and playback. Capture that window on the sphere's computer (for example with a capture or streaming tool) and play it on the sphere. Turning the globe does not change it: the sphere shows the whole Earth. For a 4096 × 2048 picture, change sphere=2048 to sphere=4096 in that window's address. In a meeting's output the pins are not shown.

Ayni Chatbot

Ayni Chatbot is the app's guide: ask it to find data, to take you somewhere, or what the globe shows. It comes with the AYNI XR plans: sign in with a plan that includes it.

• Opening it: press Ask Ayni Chatbot (bottom left), or 💬 in the Browse panel. New conversation starts again; Stop ends an answer.
• Asking: type a question and press Enter. It answers in English, Spanish or Catalan, following the app's language.
• Finding and loading data: "show me temperature projections" finds the datasets and loads one.
• Moving: "take me to Madrid", "zoom in", "go to 2050", "play", "pause".
• Values: "what is the temperature here?" reads the value on a dataset that carries values; it never guesses a number.
• Pins: "place some points to follow the data over time" puts up to six pins (see Reading values). If you do not say where, it asks. The pins collect values while the dataset plays, so let it play before asking "how did it change?". It can also mark the highest and lowest values on screen, and clear the pins.
• Statistics: "what is the average in the Arctic?", "where is it highest?", "how does it change with latitude?" or "what is the profile from Lima to Manaus?" get the same numbers as the Analyze panel, for the frame on screen, which it names. A region's statistics and its latitude profile open Analyze on that region (a named band such as the Arctic by its name), so you can see what it measured. The whole globe or a band needs a plan with whole-region statistics (Research or Education); on other plans it measures a box.
• Records the globe draws: on a dataset that draws its own records, such as the earthquakes, "what is the biggest earthquake on this day?", "which quakes were deeper than 300 km this month?" or "the strongest near Japan" read each record's own values (magnitude, depth, place and time), for the date on screen or a period you name, never the colours. It says where each one was and can take you there.
• Citing and explaining: "how do I cite this?" gives the citation (text, BibTeX or RIS) and the link that reopens the view; "what does this colour mean?" explains the units, the range, the smallest step the data can show and what a place without colour means.
• Not in your plan: if a stream is outside your plan's packages, it says so rather than loading it.

With a Research or Situation Room plan it also uses the research tools, with the same numbers as the panels and every caution they give:

• the Trend, Emergence and Correlation of the pins (ask "what is the trend at the first pin?"; it calls a pin by the name you gave it, else Pin 1, Highest value and so on);
• a baseline: the frame on screen, or a period of years, whose frames it reads one after another while it says how many are done; then the change, % change or σ change on the globe;
• Compare with a real-time overlay or another globe, the area over a threshold, and the Line over time along a line it can draw for you;
• the methods paragraph; and it opens the Figure window or points at Bundle (.zip) for you to press. It never exports, saves, shares or records anything itself.

On other plans it says in one sentence that these are part of the Research plans.

It answers by text only. In a meeting, guests do not see it.

Playlists

Playlists are your own sequences of datasets:

• Building one: open a dataset's menu (right-click, press and hold, or +; see The dataset menu) and choose Add to new playlist… or one of your playlists. + New playlist in the Playlists tab makes an empty one.
• The Playlists tab in Browse lists them. Press ▶ to play one, or its name to open it.
• In an open playlist: each dataset either waits for a click (Wait for click) or shows for a number of seconds. Move entries with ▲ ▼, remove them with ✕, and click a title to load it. ✎ renames the playlist, the bin deletes it, and Loop starts again at the end.
• Playing: while a playlist plays, Next in playlist appears in the playback controls, and Click to continue when a dataset waits for you.
• Saving: playlists save themselves as you change them. Signed in, they are kept on your account and appear on every device you sign in on. Signed out, they stay in this browser. Export saves them as a file and Import brings them back.

Khipus

A Khipu (an AYNI Khipu, a .kpu file) records what is shown on the globe, step by step: a story with its datasets, views, dates, captions, pictures and links; a lesson; or the record of a session. The name comes from the Andean khipu; see About.

• Opening one: in Browse, open the Khipus tab and press Open a Khipu file… to open a .kpu file, or the .zip AYNI downloads. Your saved Khipus are under My Khipus, below it, when your plan keeps them on your account.
• Recording your own: press Record a Khipu in the same place. Browse closes and a red bar at the top says it is recording. Automatic (the first time): explore as usual, and each view you stay on for two seconds (with its dataset, date, overlay, the way the view is turned and tilted, whether the globe spins and how fast, and the pins you put on it in Tools → Data) becomes a step; turning or tilting the view, or adding, moving or removing a pin, makes a new one, and each step plays with its own pins. While the globe spins or the dataset plays, its turning or moving date does not count as a new view. Manual: a step is made only when you press Record this view, and it waits for Next when it plays. The bar remembers the mode you used last. Add a note writes a caption for the step on screen (Enter adds it). Stop opens Your Khipu: give it a name, then Play it, Edit it, Save to my account (plans that keep Khipus), Download (.zip) or Discard; ✕ (or Escape) closes it, and asks you to press ✕ again if you have not saved or downloaded it. It is a draft story; nothing leaves your browser until you save or download it. In a meeting, the presenter saves the meeting as a Khipu instead (see Meetings).
• Making or editing one: New Khipu (in the same place) starts a story whose first step is what the globe shows; Edit it (after recording), Edit in My Khipus and Edit in the Khipu panel open a story or a briefing in the editor. Pick a step in the list; ↑ and ↓ move it, Delete step (press it twice) removes it, and Add a step from the globe puts what the globe shows after it. For the step picked: Show on the globe, Use the globe now (the step takes the globe's dataset, view with its rotation and tilt, date, overlay, spin and pins; its words stay, and a pin that stayed where it was keeps its note), The globe spins, its title, its texts (caption, question, task, or a note only the presenter sees), pictures and links (addresses must start with https://), whether it moves on when Next is pressed or by itself after some seconds, and a quiz (a question, two to four answers, the right one marked, and a hint). Preview plays it from the step picked, and Edit in the player brings you back. Save to my account and Download (.zip) check it first and list what is missing. ✕ with unsaved changes asks you to press it again.
• Playing it: a panel slides in at the right edge, like Browse and Tools, and the globe moves aside to stay in the middle of the space left; beside Browse or the Studio it stands next to them. With Tools open, it stands above Tools at the same edge, the two sharing the height (the editor stands beside Tools instead). On a narrow window (a phone, a small tablet) it opens at the top instead, and you can drag it by its title bar or move it with the arrow keys from its ⠿ grip. Each step loads its dataset, moves the globe (or frames an area), sets the date (or the first or latest frame), and can set the playback speed, the colours (palette, inverted or not, and colour limits) and up to six pins with notes. It shows its captions, questions, pictures and links. Next and Previous move through the steps. When steps move on by themselves, Pause holds the Khipu and Play runs it again. Links open in a new tab; nothing from another site is embedded. ▴ folds the panel to one line and ✕ closes it. Opening a Khipu, and closing it, takes every pin off the globe, yours from Tools → Data too, so a Khipu always starts clean and leaves nothing behind.
• Moves and effects (Khipu 1.1): in the editor, a step after the first can say how it is reached (Fly, Glide or Cut, and in how many seconds; As before is a short glide), what the camera does while it is shown (Still, Orbit, Push in or Pull out), how long that lasts, and its effects: a Spotlight at the view's centre with its radius, a Vignette, a Title card, and callouts at the view's centre (each shows the data's value there). The Khipu player plays them on the globe, and a step made in the Studio can also change its data with a crossfade, a wipe or through the plain Earth, or compare two dates beyond a moving line. Someone who asked their system for less motion gets each step at once, with its effects still shown. In the headset the camera simply goes to each step. On a Media plan, Make a video of this Khipu in the player opens it in the Studio.
• A quiz: a step can ask a question with two to four answers. Pick one and the right answer shows; Show a hint gives the hint first, if the step has one. In a meeting you present, Ask the room puts the question to everyone as a choice question, with its tally and reveal in the meeting panel.
• Session records replay what happened in order, with long waits shortened. Drag the slider to jump to any moment.
• NOAA's stories: some NOAA datasets open with their Khipu, made from the guided sequence NOAA wrote for them: the view, date and borders NOAA chose, or a story with captions, pictures and links in the Khipu panel. NOAA's 360° pictures of the National Marine Sanctuaries are a story card in Browse. Has a story (Khipu) in Browse's filters finds the datasets that have one.
• A lesson opens in the lesson panel instead, and never moves the globe by itself (see Lessons).
• Download (.zip) saves the Khipu with its licence. On a plan that does not keep Khipus on your account, the download holds the steps only, without the record of what happened. Save to my account keeps it, on plans that keep Khipus (see Lessons for how long).
• Locked datasets: a stream your plan does not include shows its name with a lock and a link to the plans.
• In a meeting, the room follows the globe as the Khipu moves it; the panel stays on your screen, and everyone else sees a card with the Khipu's title, the step, its captions and its pins (folded with ▴). In the headset it shows in the Khipu panel, without buttons: you move the Khipu on.

Lessons

The lessons, in Browse's Khipus tab, are AYNI's lessons for grades 6 to 12, built on the NGSS standards. They come with the Education plans (Teacher, School and District). Signed out, or on another plan, the tab says so and links to the plans.

• Finding a lesson: choose a grade or a topic, or type in the search box: a title, an NGSS code such as MS-ESS2-3, or a dataset. Lessons marked Flagship are the best tested.
• A lesson's page: press a lesson to see its driving question, its steps and the dataset each one shows, a common misconception and what is actually true, the exit ticket and the teacher notes (press Teacher notes to open them).
• Teaching it: press Start the lesson. A panel slides in at the right edge and shows one step at a time, the globe moving aside to stay in the middle of the space left (on a narrow window it opens at the top, and you can drag it by its title bar or move it with the arrow keys from its ⠿ grip). With Tools open, the lesson panel and Tools share the right edge: the lesson on top, Tools under it, the same width, and when both do not fit each scrolls in its part. Close Tools and the lesson has the whole edge again. Its dataset loads, and the panel shows the students' questions and tasks. Next step and Previous move through the steps; ▴ folds the panel to one line and ✕ closes it. Read values opens the data tools on a step whose dataset has values.
• Overlay for this step: most steps suggest an overlay that helps read the data, such as Plate Boundaries over earthquakes, Rivers over rainfall, Ocean Names over currents or City Names over air quality. It appears under the dataset in the lesson panel (and on the lesson's page); press it to draw it over the data, press it again to take it off. Nothing goes on by itself, and you can choose any other overlay in Tools → Layers. In a class, students see the overlay you put on.
• Add a variable, one at a time: some steps go further and offer live variables to lay over the step's dataset, numbered in the order to add them: in Severe Weather, cloud, then rain, then lightning over the sea's temperature; in Fire in Living Systems, fires, then rain, then lightning over soil water. Press 1 to add the first: it plays over the dataset on the same date (its dates show as a yellow track above the date track), and the panel shows what to look for now that it is there, the question that connects it with the dataset. Then press 2, and so on, so the class builds the picture one link at a time. A variable shows only on its own dates: if the globe is on a date outside the dates the dataset and the variables share, the press moves it to the latest date they share and the panel says so. Press a variable again to take it off; Take off what this step added removes them all, and moving to another step or closing the lesson does too (streams you chose yourself in Tools → Layers stay). Nothing goes on by itself. A computer plays four at once; a phone or Quest plays two, so there the third takes the place of the first. Pins and their graphs read the step's dataset, not the variables. A variable your plan does not include shows a lock and a link to the plans. In a class, students see the variables you add; on a Quest, the lesson panel beside the globe has them as buttons; the printed worksheet lists them with what to look for and room to write.
• More to show: some lessons carry extra datasets that belong to no step, such as a model of the ocean conveyor or a narrated explainer. They are listed under More to show in the lesson panel (and on the lesson's page): press one to put it on the globe, and Back to this step's dataset to return.
• Pins: starting a lesson and closing it takes every pin off the globe; between its steps your pins stay, so a task can read the same places on the next dataset.
• Your view, your way: a lesson never moves the globe or places pins for you. Turn the globe and pick a date, then press Keep this view for this step. When you come back to that step, the globe returns there. What you keep stays in this browser; Forget removes it.
• Worksheets: Print worksheet (on the lesson's page and in the lesson panel) opens a page for the students with each step's questions and tasks, lines to write on and the exit ticket; Print teacher copy adds why each dataset was chosen, the common misconception, what is actually true and the teacher notes. Print them, or choose Save as PDF in the print window.
• Save to my account (in the lesson panel) keeps your version of the lesson on your account: with an Education plan for 90 days from your last save (or until your licence ends, with the add-on that keeps them), on other plans until your licence ends plus 30 days. Saving again replaces it. Your saved lessons are under My Khipus at the top of the Khipus tab, with your other Khipus: Open plays one with the views you kept, Download saves it as a .zip, and Delete (press it twice) removes it. An account keeps up to 200 Khipus and 16 MB. After your licence ends, My Khipus stays until the date shown, with Download and Delete only.
• Your own lesson: Download my lesson (.zip) saves your version: the lesson with the views you kept, as an AYNI Khipu file (.kpu), and its licence. The name comes from the Andean khipu; see About.
• Locked and missing datasets: a stream your plan does not include shows its name with a lock and a link to the plans. A few library datasets cannot play in AYNI XR yet; the step says so.
• With a class: start a meeting first, then start the lesson. The class sees the datasets you show and, with an Education plan, reads values with the data tools on their own devices (see Meetings). The lesson panel and its teacher notes stay on your screen only.

AYNI lessons are © Pachamama Studios B.V. under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. They are not for commercial use, and not for use in promotion by any company or organisation, without permission. A lesson you adapt keeps that licence and its credit.

Your own data

With a Researcher or Lab plan, the My data tab in Browse turns your own files into datasets on the globe that only you can see (and, on a Lab plan, the rest of your lab). They never appear in the catalogue or in search. My data appears once own data is switched on for the site; until then the tab and Account → Passkeys are not shown.

• What you can upload: one file at a time, in NetCDF (3 or 4), GeoTIFF or Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF, Zarr (as a .zip), HDF5 or GRIB. The largest file is 50 GB. The tab shows how much of your storage is used (Researcher 50 GB, Lab 250 GB).
• Uploading: press Upload a file, choose it, give it a title if you like, and press Encrypt and upload. Your browser encrypts the file before any of it leaves your computer, sends it in 64 MB parts and computes its SHA-256 fingerprint on the way. Keep the page open until it is sent: a lost connection pauses the upload and Resume carries on from the last part sent, but a reload stops it. Cancel stops an upload at once and destroys the key of what was sent, so it can never be read and no longer counts among the three jobs that can be in progress at once. An upload stopped by a reload shows as interrupted: open its Details and press Cancel this upload to do the same, or it is removed within 24 hours. You can cancel your own upload until the file has been checked; the lab's owner can cancel anyone's.
• What protects your data: your original file and its exact values are encrypted with a key made for that dataset alone. The stream made for the globe (its video, thumbnail and colour bar) is not encrypted: it is protected by access tokens, which the site gives only to you, your lab and the people you share the dataset with, for 10 minutes at a time. The upload page and the review before Publish say the same.
• The checks: the processor decrypts what arrived and computes the fingerprint again. If it differs, the file is destroyed before anything opens it and the page says so. Then it reads the file and shows What is in the file: the variables and their units, the grid, the time axis and any notes. Everything the file says is shown as plain text.
• Your choices: pick the variable, the time span (times are UTC), only part of the grid if you want, the palette, the value range and the regridding method (nearest, bilinear or conservative; the page names your grid's resolution and the globe's). The range starts at the 0.1 and 99.9 percentiles of your data; values outside it are clipped to its ends. Require an accuracy sets a tolerance, for example 99 % of values within 0.1 m/s: the processor picks an encoding that meets it, or stops and says why. Press Process.
• Review: when processing ends, the job page shows the error budget, measured by decoding the stream and comparing it with your data: 8-bit rounding (the step and half of it), video compression (mean, 99th percentile, largest, and the worst frame), clipping (the share clipped low and high, and the furthest value), regridding (the method, both resolutions and the difference it makes), the time axis (missing, repeated or frozen frames) and no-data cells. Under it, whether your tolerance is met. Publish works only when it is.
• Opening it: Open puts a published dataset on the globe. It plays like any stream, with the date track, the value under the pointer, pins and Analyze, each value with its ±. The information panel has an Accuracy section with the same budget in words. The exact values are kept, encrypted, beside the video; reading them in pins and Analyze comes later.
• Who sees what: every dataset of your lab is listed, marked Yours or From your lab. Only the lab's owner (at first, the first person to use own data on the licence) deletes datasets and downloads the whole lab's custody record.
• Lab members and roles: on a Lab plan the owner's Lab members lists everyone holding a seat of the licence. Each is a Member (uploads, views, shares their own datasets, adds continuous sources) or a Viewer (views only); choose and press Save. Choosing Owner for someone hands the owner's role to them and makes you a member. Seats themselves are added and released on the licence.
• Confirming it is you: before you share, delete a dataset, delete your account, add a continuous source, change a role, publish openly or change your passkeys, AYNI XR asks you to confirm. With a passkey (Account → Passkeys → Add a passkey: your device then asks for your fingerprint, face or PIN), press Use my passkey. Without one, AYNI XR emails you an eight-digit code to type in the box. For most of these, this browser is then not asked again for 10 minutes; adding or removing a passkey, publishing openly, handing on the owner's role and deleting your account are confirmed each time. Once your account has a passkey, codes no longer come by email. After 15 wrong codes in a day, codes are locked for a day and you get an email.
• Passkeys: Account → Passkeys lists yours. Every passkey added is announced by email with a link: if you did not add it, open the link (it works once, for 7 days, even signed out) to remove that passkey and sign your account out everywhere. Remove takes away a passkey you still have (confirmed with a passkey). I lost it removes a passkey you no longer have: AYNI XR emails you a code, and the passkey is removed 72 hours later, with an email then and a day before; a session confirmed with that passkey can cancel it.
• Sharing: Share on a published dataset (yours, or any of the lab's for the owner) lets other people view it in AYNI XR. They do not get its exact values and cannot change, share or delete it; like anything on a screen, what they see can still be captured. What you shared ends when you leave the lab, become a viewer or delete your account.
  • Invite someone: type their email address, choose for how long, and press Send invitation. They get an email; when they sign in to AYNI XR with that address (an account is made the first time), the dataset is under My data → Shared with me. They need no plan.
  • Share by link: choose for how long (at most 30 days) and press Make a link. Copy it at once: it is shown only once. Anyone signed in who opens it is first shown the dataset's title and your display name and asked Open it or Not now; if they open it, they can view the dataset until the link ends. People in your own lab do not need the link and cannot accept it.
  • Who has access lists every invitation and link, whether it was opened, and until when. Withdraw ends it: anyone viewing loses the dataset within 10 minutes.
  • In this meeting: when you are presenting a meeting, Show to this meeting first tells you exactly what happens: everyone in the meeting, signed in or not, sees the dataset until the meeting ends (its time is shown) or you press Stop showing to the meeting, and each person's viewing is logged in the custody record. Press Show it to the meeting to go ahead. Opening a private dataset while you present does not show it to the others until you do this.
• Shared with me: datasets others shared with you, with who shared them (their display name) and until when, each with Open.
• Continuous sources: for a bucket that receives new files (for example a forecast every 6 hours), Continuous sources → Add a continuous source asks for the S3-compatible endpoint (https), the bucket, a prefix and region, and an access key that can only read that prefix. The secret is encrypted at once and never shown again. Choose how often to look for new files (every 5 minutes at most) or to wait for the bucket's notifications, whether to keep the most recent frames or the whole archive, the variable, palette and an optional tolerance. We first test the key and refuse it if it can write. Each new release that meets your tolerance is published by itself; one that misses it is not, the last good release stays, and you get an alert (on the page and by email). Researcher plans have one continuous source, Lab plans five. When your storage is full, new uploads and new releases are refused; nothing is ever deleted for it. Pause, Resume (the key is tested again) and Delete source (we delete the key; the dataset stays) are on each source.
• Publishing openly: when AYNI XR offers it, the lab's owner can publish a dataset under CC BY 4.0 from Share, after typing its title: anyone can then view, download and reuse its current release, crediting you. A later release stays private until you publish it openly again; a dataset fed by a continuous source cannot be published openly. Withdraw open publishing makes it private again, but copies already taken cannot be called back.
• Custody record: Custody record downloads the signed log of everything done with a dataset: its fingerprints, who uploaded, processed, published and opened it, and when. It holds no data.
• Deleting: Delete asks you to type the dataset's title (and a code, see above). It destroys the dataset's encryption key, so every copy of the original, the stream and the exact values is unreadable from that moment, and the files are then removed. The custody record, with the certificate that the key was destroyed, is kept for 10 years.
• When a plan ends: your data becomes read-only. It is deleted 30 days after the plan lapses, after two warnings, unless the plan is renewed.

Sharing and downloading

• A dataset: Share (top left, under Show anchor) opens your device's share options, or copies a link such as vr.ayni.eu.com/dataset/… and says Link copied. With no dataset loaded it shares AYNI XR itself.
• A filtered list: copy the page address while Browse is filtered.
• Downloading: where a card shows 📦, press it to download the dataset's files as a .zip. Choose the parts you want, such as the data, the frames, the legend or the captions, then press Start download.

Citing a view

For a paper, a report or a slide, Cite this view writes down exactly what is on the globe. It is in the information panel, under Data credit, and in the Analyze panel, under the results. It works on every plan.

• The citation names who made the data, the dataset, the frame's date in UTC (as precise as the dataset: 2075 for a yearly stream, 2003-08 for a monthly one, the date and time for an hourly one), the credit and licence the data's publisher asks for, AYNI XR, the link and the day you looked. Choose Text, BibTeX (LaTeX) or RIS (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote), then Copy or Download. Citations are in English, like the CSV files.
• The link reopens the same dataset, paused on the same frame, with the camera in the same place, zoom, turn and tilt, and the same overlays and real-time overlays: for example vr.ayni.eu.com/dataset/…?at=2026-08-27T21:00Z&view=48.20,16.40,3.50&base=…. On a yearly or monthly stream at is just the year or month (at=2075, at=2003-08) and opens the frame labelled with it. Copy link copies it. Anyone opening it still needs a plan that includes the stream (and each real-time overlay's).
• CSV files carry the same facts in their first rows (see Analyze); the pins' file carries the link but not one frame, since it covers them all.

A figure and a methods paragraph

With a Research or Situation Room plan, Figure and Methods sit under the tabs of the Analyze panel. Both open one window, and opening it pauses playback, so everything in it describes one frame. With other plans the two buttons show a lock that opens the plans.

• The map: The globe, as shown (the globe as it is on screen, with its overlays and any change you are showing) or Equal Earth map of the whole frame (the whole dataset on a flat map that keeps areas true, with coastlines and lines every 30°).
• The size: one column (85 mm wide) or two columns (180 mm), at 300 dpi, the sizes journals ask for.
• The title is the dataset and the frame's date in UTC, as precise as the dataset (a year, a month, or a date and time); change it as you like. Pins, with their names marks your pins.
• Under the map: the colour bar in the data's units (or, while a change from a baseline or a Compare difference is on the globe, its blue–red bar and what grey means, a Compare in % of B with its own grey rule; with a period held, the bar names the period and the month the frame is compared with, and a σ change runs from −3σ to +3σ), and the citation as the caption.
• Download PNG saves the picture; it opens at its printed size and carries its title and caption inside the file. Download SVG saves the same figure with its text, colour bar and pins as text and shapes you can edit; the map in it stays a picture. If the screen is too small to draw the globe at the figure's size, the window says so and the file records the size it came from.
• Methods gives a paragraph to paste into a paper's methods section, followed by its references: the dataset and its version, how AYNI XR reads it, the frames, the region, the baseline (for a period: how its averages and σ were computed, how many frames were read or skipped, and how many cells had σ raised to the data's step), the statistics and tests you used, a comparison (with an overlay or another globe, how the frames were paired, and a % of B with its grey rule), the area over a threshold, each with its published reference, and the link that reopens the view. It is written only from what you did in this session (what is measured, held and switched on now) and never claims a step you did not take. A figure appears in it once you have downloaded one. Copy or Download it.
• The figure and the paragraph are in English, like the citation.

Everything in one file: the bundle

With a Research or Situation Room plan, Bundle (.zip) beside Figure and Methods saves what a reader needs to check your numbers and open your view again, in one zip. Playback pauses first, so every part describes one frame.

• What is in it: the citation as text, BibTeX and RIS (citation/); the link that reopens the view (view-link.txt); the methods paragraph with its references (methods.txt); every CSV you could export at that moment (data/: the statistics, the latitude and line profiles, the line over time, the pins and their trend, emergence and correlation, Compare, the area over a threshold); the figure as PNG at 300 dpi and SVG (figure/), drawn with the settings you last chose in the Figure window, or the globe one column wide if you have not opened it; and your research record (record/) while one is recording.
• Only what exists: a CSV is there only when that analysis is on screen; the record only while recording. The names inside the zip are always the same, so a script can find them.
• Checking it: README.txt says what each file is, how to reopen the view, how to check the files and the licence of each data source; manifest.json lists every file with its size and SHA-256. Once saved, the panel shows the bundle's own SHA-256, and a research record that is recording keeps it.
• The data keeps its own licence and credit, which the README and the citation name.

Meetings

A meeting is a session that one presenter drives while everyone else watches and takes part from their own screen: computers, phones and tablets, in the room or far away. Joining never needs an account.

Hosting a meeting

Hosting needs a signed-in account with a plan that includes meetings (see Accounts and plans). A meeting holds as many people as the plan says, up to 500; once it is full, nobody else gets in until someone leaves. In a meeting of more than 50, the presenter's camera reaches each person within a few seconds of going live (up to 20 seconds at 500), so that everyone does not connect in the same instant. A game takes up to 50 players; past that, the others follow the board.

1. Open Tools and press Start a meeting…, then Create meeting.
2. Invite people with the link:
   • Email, Gmail, Outlook, WhatsApp, Share… or Copy link;
   • or show the QR code on a projector for phones to scan;
   • or read out the code under the link (for example K7QXP M2RT9): people type it on the AYNI XR home page.
3. Optionally invite a moderator with their own link.
4. Press Start presenting.

A meeting and its links last 8 hours. Until you arrive, participants wait in a lobby.

Joining

Open the link or scan the QR code. Or go to vr.ayni.eu.com, and under Or type the class or meeting code type the code you were given (spaces and dashes do not matter) and press Join. If no class or meeting with that code is open, the page says so. You see what the presenter shows. You cannot change it; the controls are hidden. Add your name if you like: only the presenter sees it.

In a class (a meeting started with an Education plan), you also get Tools with the Data tab, on your own device and with no account: read values under the pointer, drop up to six pins of your own, see their graph and download it as CSV, and measure with Line and Box. Your pins are yours alone and are not kept: they go when the meeting ends. When the teacher starts a class, the meeting panel says so.

Camera and microphone

The presenter can press Go live: camera and mic, with buttons to mute, turn the camera off, change devices or stop. Participants see the presenter in a small window: tap it to hear. Sound only saves data.

Doing things together

The presenter presses Start an activity. The window that opens can be dragged by its title (or moved with the arrow keys from its ⠿ grip) off whatever the presenter wants to show; choosing another kind of activity empties the question box.

• Let them explore: for a set time everyone has their own globe and the whole Tools panel: they can turn and zoom it, open another dataset, change the layers and the date, and use the data tools. Nobody follows the presenter meanwhile. When the time is up, or the presenter presses Bring everyone back, everyone's globe returns to the presenter's at once and the controls lock again. Meanwhile the meeting lends them the streaming packages of the presenter's licence (a teacher's add-ons, for example), so they can open the same datasets the presenter can; it lends them too while a participant holds or drives a globe, and stops when the globe goes back or the exploring ends. A dataset outside both their own plan and the presenter's stays locked (they are told; no plans window opens in a meeting). Participants press Pin what you found (up to 5, with a short note); if their connection drops for a moment, the pin they were writing is still there when it comes back. The presenter sees a live heat map of where people look, can Show everyone a pin, and ends with Bring everyone back.
• Ask: point on the globe: participants tap their answer and Send answer. The presenter Reveals the right place, and each person sees how far they were.
• Ask: choose an answer: 2 to 6 options, a live count, then Reveal.
• Poll: ask their opinion: 2 to 6 options and no right answer. Tick Let people pick more than one to allow several (participants pick, then Vote). Everyone sees the counts as votes come in, but nobody sees who voted for what. Participants can change their vote until the presenter presses Close poll.

Every activity can have a time limit with a clock everyone sees. Without a limit, the clock counts up.

Your name. On arriving, each participant is offered a small card, Your name (optional; Not now skips it). Their pill at the top (You: Ana, or Add your name) changes it later. The presenter and moderators see the name next to the participant's answers until the meeting ends; without one, a participant is Guest 3 (their number in the meeting). It works the same in a browser, on a phone and over the camera in phone AR. A headset asks for it on the page, before entering VR.

Answers kept for the meeting. Each participant's answers stay theirs for the whole meeting: a reload or a dropped connection loses nothing, and an answer is never counted twice. My answers lists one's own. Nothing leaves the meeting, and all of it is deleted when it ends.

People. The presenter and the moderators have People (n): everyone in the meeting, with raised hands, who has a globe and whose microphone is on. From there they can:

• Give the globe (or Give globe 2 with several globes). The participant then drives the sphere and the whole Tools panel, and can put their microphone on (sound only).
• Take back the globe.
• Mic off, which turns a driver's microphone off.
• Remove someone, after confirming. A removed person is told so and can't come back to this meeting from that browser. A moderator can remove participants; the presenter can remove anyone.

The Answers tab lists the meeting's activities. Press one to see each person's answer (a place with how far it was, an option, or the pins they dropped). A poll shows only its totals.

While a participant has the globe, the presenter can Take over for a moment (the participant's microphone goes off, and they are told the globe will come back) and Hand back when done.

Participants can Raise your hand. The presenter or a moderator can Give the globe to them and Take back later.

Ending. The presenter's End meeting (asked once more) ends the meeting for everyone: everyone sees "The meeting has ended", everything the meeting kept is deleted, and its links stop working. Everyone else has Leave, which closes the meeting for them only; they can come back with the same link while it lasts. Close on that last card opens AYNI XR again without the meeting.

Games in a meeting

With an Education plan (Teacher, School or District), a meeting can play games. The presenter presses Games, beside Start an activity:

• Trivia: open a Khipu with questions first (Browse → Khipus). Each step with a question is a round: the globe moves to that step, everyone picks an answer, and a right answer scores more the harder it is and the sooner it came.

• Where on Earth?: each round gives a clue to a place (from a list of 120 places checked by hand). Everyone turns their own globe and taps where they think it is; the closer and the quicker, the more points. When the globe shows a dataset with values, some rounds ask where it is highest or lowest right now, and score how high (or low) the value is where you tapped.

• Wayra's Adventures (a game made for ages 8 to 14): each table helps Wayra, a puppy, around the world. Each stop gives a clue about where she is, and a new one every 15 to 30 seconds (or press Another clue), harder clues first. Six places are on the list: tap one, and when more than half the table picks the same place, it locks after three seconds (pick another to stop it). The right place earns treats (more for fewer clues); a wrong one is crossed out and the next clue comes at once. Look turns your own globe to a place. Wayra's last stop is home: turn your globe to your town before you start (you can name it). At the end the table sees its stars and votes on sharing treats with Para, her brother.

• Team Earth: each table plans the decades to 2070 together. Each decade starts with an event; then everyone backs cards for the system they look after (air, climate, water or fire; switch with the chips) from the table's tokens, and presses Ready. The cards with most support are played and the planet's meters answer. At the end the table sees up to four stars and how warm 2070 is.

In Wayra and Team Earth each table plays at its own pace: the presenter presses Start at every table and watches each table's progress; the board ranks the tables, since a table plays together.

Choose the answer time (and, for Where on Earth?, the number of rounds), then Start the game. Everyone else joins by themselves:

• Each player gets a funny name (for example "Glaciar Valiente") and a table of four. Nobody types a name; Another name, please changes it once. While a game is on, nobody sees typed names, the presenter included: a raised hand shows the game name.
• Before the first round the presenter can move a player to another table.
• In a round, players answer in the game panel (or by tapping the globe). The round closes when everyone has answered, when time is up, or with Close the round now. Then everyone sees the right answer, their points, their table's points (the average of its players), and the board: the top five players, every table, and each player's own place, shown to them only.
• Next round goes on; after the last one, Show the final board, then Close the game. End the game stops it at any time.

Someone whose connection drops comes back with the same name, table and points, in the same browser tab. Someone who arrives during a round plays from the next one. Nothing about the game is kept after the meeting.

After a trivia or Where on Earth? game, the final board offers Download as a Khipu and, on plans that keep Khipus, Save to my account: a story with one step per round, showing its question, the right answer and what the room answered in totals (never names or points). A trivia game kept this way can be played as trivia again.

In a headset, a player sees the game in the Khipu panel beside the globe: a trivia round's answers are its buttons, and a Where on Earth? round is answered by tapping the globe. Wayra and Team Earth are played on a phone or a computer. On a phone in AR, the game panel shows over the camera.

Several globes in a meeting

When the presenter shows two or four globes (see Comparing datasets on several globes), everyone in the meeting sees the same globes, each with the presenter's dataset and date rule. Beside each raised hand the presenter also finds Give globe 2 (3, 4): that participant then drives that globe from their own screen, and everyone sees it. A driver can turn their globe, give it a dataset through its chip (Browse opens loading into that globe only) and set its date rule; the main globe, the clock and the other globes stay the presenter's. While any globe is driven, turning one globe no longer turns the others. The globe's row says who drives it. The presenter sees the globes handed out under the activity bar, with Take back on each; a driver has Give it back. A globe goes back by itself when its driver leaves.

In a class, the meeting lends four globes to everyone in it, so a teacher on an Education plan can hand out globes 2, 3 and 4.

A driver can also speak to the meeting: press Microphone on: everyone hears you (the words beside it say what that means, and the browser asks for the microphone), then Mute or Stop. Only sound is sent, never a driver's camera. Everyone else sees Drivers speaking with a chip per globe, muted until they press Listen to the drivers. A driver's microphone stops with Stop, when they give the globe back, when the presenter takes it back, or when they leave.

Save as Khipu keeps what the room was shown (not the audio or video) as a Khipu: the datasets, the views you rested on, each question with its totals, and the pins with their notes, never anyone's name. Download (.zip) saves it, Save to my account keeps it on plans that keep Khipus, and Play it to the room replays it in the Khipu player while the room follows (see Khipus).

Limits to know

• There is no "end meeting" button. The meeting returns to the lobby when the presenter leaves, and ends after 8 hours.
• In a Quest headset, participants follow the dataset and playback, and the dock says when the presenter has the controls, but the meeting panels are not shown.
• In AR on a phone, the meeting bar shows over the camera picture, but answering by tapping the sphere is not available yet.

The Situation room

With a Situation Room plan, Tools → Situation room opens the room's panel beside the globe. It is made for a civil-protection or operations room: what is happening now, how old each piece of data is, a board for the room's screens, and briefings that are kept as a record. Everyone who holds a seat of the licence shares the same room.

The clock at the top gives the time in UTC and in your local time.

How old the data is

Each globe's stream is listed with how old its data is:

• On time: the newest frame is as recent as the stream can be. A daily stream's frame covers a whole day and is published after it, so on time can mean up to two days and six hours old; an hourly one, up to eight hours.
• Late: one release is missing.
• Stale: two or more are missing. Say so before you brief from it.
• Forecasts are aged by their run: on time up to a day old.
• Not live: an archive or a projection, which is not meant to change.

The line above the list sums it up.

The board

Show the situation puts the board's first view on the globes: rain, fire, smoke and wind on four globes over Europe. Each globe shows its own stream's newest frame, so a daily stream is not left behind by an hourly one.

Play the board plays all its views in turn, as the room's screens do: the situation now, disaster alerts, earthquakes, then the next days' rain, fire danger and smoke. Change the board opens it in the Khipu editor: move the camera to your region, add or remove views, change how long each one stays, then press Save as the room's board. The screens show the new board from their next round. Back to the standard board undoes your changes.

Wall displays

A wall display is any browser on a screen in the room. It needs no account and takes no seat.

1. On the screen's browser, open vr.ayni.eu.com/?wall=1. It shows a code like KQ7-M2X.
2. In the panel, under Wall displays, type the code and a name for the screen (for example "Main wall"), and press Pair.
3. The screen starts the board within a few seconds and plays it again and again, with the screen's name, the clock, each view's title and how old each globe's data is. Nothing on it can be pressed.

The screen stays on (it asks the browser to keep the display awake), keeps playing the last board if the network drops (it then shows "Offline"), and reloads itself every three hours to pick up new data. A code lasts ten minutes; a room pairs up to four screens. Unpair stops a screen at once: it shows a new code.

To show a briefing on the screens, present it as a meeting (below) and press Show this meeting on the walls in the panel of the page that presents it. The screens join the meeting at their next step and go back to the board when you press Take the meeting off the walls or the meeting ends.

Giving a briefing

1. Under Briefing, choose The 72-hour briefing (or the board).
2. Tick Put my name on the record if the record should say who gave the briefing. Without it, the record has no names.
3. Press Start the briefing. It plays in the Khipu panel: each step has notes for you (open by default; the room does not see them) and names the next step. Move on with Next.
4. The last step, Decision, has a box: write what was decided.
5. Press Finish the briefing in the Situation room panel.

While it plays, the panel shows Recording the briefing. The record keeps each step you showed, with the date of the frame on every globe and how old it was then, a picture of each globe, and the decision. Then:

• Save the record keeps it in your account (Browse → Khipus), sealed so a change to it shows.
• Briefing pack (print or PDF) opens a page to print or save as PDF, with the pictures, dates, ages, decisions, the data credits and the record's fingerprint (SHA-256).
• Download (.zip) saves the record as a file.

Start a meeting for it invites officials who are not in the room; they join free, without an account. While you present the meeting, the own layers you show on your globe are shown to everyone in it too; hide one (untick it under Your layers) and it leaves their globes within half a minute. When the meeting ends, they can no longer read them. Second screen opens the globes alone in another window, for the projector, while you keep your notes.

Your layers

Add your own sites, areas or routes, such as shelters, hospitals, flood zones or evacuation routes, as a GeoJSON, KML or KMZ file (Add a layer). Each layer gets a colour, and its features' names are written on the globe when you zoom in. Over your layers the globe zooms closer than usual. Tick a layer to show or hide it on this computer. Layers are private to your licence and its screens. Only each feature's name and description are kept from the file. A room keeps up to ten layers of 1.5 MB each.

Limits to know

• Alerts when a value passes a threshold, layers from map services (WMS) and alert feeds (CAP), and exercises are planned, not built.

Shared sessions and the AYNI XR marker

A shared session is an open room for friends or a class: everyone who joins follows the person with an account who has been there longest. It holds up to 5 people when it is opened from a free account, and up to 40 from a presenting plan. Someone who joins through the link without an account only watches, as a meeting's audience does, and never leads.

To start one, press Show anchor (top left). The screen shows the AYNI XR marker and a QR code. Others scan the QR code to join.

The marker puts the same globe in the same place for everyone in AR, on Android phones:

1. Lay the marker flat, on a screen at full brightness or on paper at least 10 cm wide.
2. In AR, press Scan marker.
3. Put the dot in the middle of your screen on the marker, and move slowly.
4. When it says Aligned, the globe floats just above the marker. The green outline should sit on the marker's edge; if it does not, scan again.

Marker alignment is new and is still being refined.

VR on Meta Quest

1. Open the site in the Quest browser. Loading a dataset first is optional: you can choose one in the headset.
2. Press Enter AR (or Enter VR). The globe appears in front of you at eye height. Hints over the controllers name the buttons, and fade after a few uses.

The dock under the globe has three rows:

• the dataset's title and date, or a short notice (a stream outside your plan, a presenter who has the controls);
• frame back, play/pause, frame forward, sound and speed (½×, 1×, 2×, 4×), and a bar to move through a video. A stream with dates has its date track under the dock instead; drag it with the trigger;
• Browse, Layers, Data, View, Help and Exit. Each opens a panel to the right of the globe; press the button again, or ✕, to close it.

Browse has Catalog and Recent, the same kind and theme filters as the browser, and a search you type on the keyboard drawn on the panel. The list scrolls: push the thumbstick while you point at it, drag it with the trigger, or drag its scroll bar. A lock means the stream is not in your plan.

Layers has up to two overlays (each white, black or as published) and the real-time streams, as Tools → Layers does. Long lists scroll the same way. With Real time open, the streams playing are listed at the top, top first as they are drawn, each with an eye (hide it on the globe, and show it again) and a ✕ (take it off). Point at a stream's ⠿, hold the trigger and move up or down to change the order. Its palette button opens the stream's colours: pick a palette, and use − and + to move its minimum and maximum, and Transparency with its own − and + (10 % a press; a stream whose colours cannot change shows only this). Done goes back. Under the streams (and with none playing), the dataset's line (green, with a lock) has its palette button (it opens View, with the dataset's colours and transparency), its eye (hide it, and show it again) and its ✕ (close it and every stream). View has the dataset's Transparency beside Reset colours.

View has the palettes and Invert palette. Colour limits are set in the browser.

Data: aim at a place on the globe and press A (or X on the left controller) to drop a pin there, up to six. Each pin shows its value on a label that leans toward you, so it does not cover the data around it. The panel lists the pins with the graph. Mark highest & lowest and Clear all work as in the browser. The pencil on a pin's row renames it: type the name on the keys drawn on the panel (a word starts with a capital by itself) and press Done, or Cancel; an empty name gives it its own back. A pin you named shows its name in front of its value on the globe, in the headset and in the browser alike.

The legend stands beside the globe on the left. Its ✕ closes it: it flies into the side panel and waits at the foot of View, where Beside the globe puts it back (and Park it here closes it from there). On a dataset that carries values, the value under the ray shows beside the dot where the ray meets the globe, with its place.

A Khipu or a lesson that is playing (see Khipus) has a panel to the left of the globe, above the legend: its title, the step, what the step says, and Previous, Play/Pause, Next (Finish on the last step) and ✕. Pictures, clips and links are not shown in the headset: the panel says how many there are, to see in the browser. A step's quiz has its answers as buttons: press one, and the right one is marked. The step's pins stand on the globe with their notes, beside your own. In a meeting, the presenter's step shows in the same panel, without buttons.

The dock and the panels follow the globe: they stay beside it when you move it, zoom it or walk round it.

Placing the globe in your room (passthrough): press the place button beside the dock, aim at a surface and pull the trigger, then look up or down to set the height and pull the trigger again.

What you change in the headset (the dataset, layers, colours, pins) is there in the browser when you leave, and the browser globe turns to the side you were looking at.

AR on Android phones and tablets

Open the site in Chrome on an Android device with Google Play Services for AR, and press AR (top right). The first time, a short page says what to expect; press Start AR.

Over the camera picture:

• At the top: ✕ to leave AR, the dataset's name and date, and ? for tips.
• The legend under it. Tap it for the colours; its ✕ closes it into View, where ⇱ brings it back.
• The playback bar: frame back, play/pause, frame forward, a track through the dataset's dates, the speed and the sound. With a real-time stream on top, a line above them names it, with an eye to hide it on the globe (tap again to show it) and a ✕ to take it off. Left of the name, hold ⠿ and drag the line up or down to change the order (the top line is drawn on top), and tap the palette button to change the stream's palette and minimum and maximum, and its transparency (a stream whose colours cannot change opens with the transparency only). The last line, in green, is the dataset (it shows with no stream playing too): its palette button opens its colours and transparency, its eye hides it and its ✕ closes it and every stream, with Undo.
• The dock: Browse, Layers, Data, View and Place.

1. Placing: press Place. "Step 1 of 2 — aim at a surface", then Place; "Step 2 of 2 — tilt to set height": tilt the phone and press Place again.
2. Turning: drag one finger sideways to spin the globe, up or down to tilt it.
3. Size: use the slider on the right edge. Two-finger gestures are not used, so you cannot change the size by accident.

Browse is the same panel as in the browser, with search, tabs, filters and playlists. Layers, Data and View are the Tools tabs. In Data, press Pin on globe, close the sheet, and tap the globe to drop a pin; its value shows beside it on the globe.

A Khipu or a lesson that is playing shows its panel over the camera, under the legend, with the same buttons as in the browser.

What you change in AR (the dataset, layers, colours, pins) stays when you leave.

iPhones and iPads cannot enter AR, but they can join rooms and meetings in the normal view.

The Studio: videos of the globe (Media plans)

With a Media Desk or Newsroom plan, the Studio button in the bar (next to Browse) opens a panel for making a video of what you see. It opens at the right edge like Browse and Tools, and the globe moves aside to stay in the middle of the space left. Rendering videos is not open yet; you can frame and save shots and see their price today.

• Shot: give it a title, then choose the video's Shape (16:9 horizontal, 9:16 vertical, 1:1 square or 4:5 portrait), Resolution (HD, 4K or 8K) and Frames per second. The video's length comes from its stops (up to three minutes; Length shows it).
• File: an MP4 (H.264, plays everywhere), an MP4 (H.265) (smaller, for newer players), ProRes 4444 for editing suites, a GIF for the web (1080p, up to 20 seconds, 15 frames a second) or a Still image (PNG) of the moment you set in Still at. For ProRes and stills, Transparent space leaves out the stars and the atmosphere, so the globe can be placed over a studio background. 8K and ProRes come with the Newsroom plan.
• Stops: a video is a row of stops, like the steps of a Khipu. Move the globe and the date to where the video should start and press Add the view as a stop; do the same for each place, date and dataset it should go through. Each stop Holds for a number of seconds. The timeline above the list shows every stop as a block (striped while the camera is getting there); drag the end of a block to make that stop hold longer or shorter, or click a block to edit it. In the list, Move earlier and Move later reorder stops and Remove takes one out. Show on the globe puts the globe on the selected stop; Use the globe now makes the stop what the globe shows. Open one of my Khipus turns a saved Khipu into a new video, its steps the stops (the Khipu itself stays as it was), and the Khipu player's Make a video of this Khipu does the same for the Khipu you are watching.
• Playing is recorded: while the Studio is open, playing the data (the play button, the space bar) is part of the video. When it starts, the date it starts from becomes a stop where the globe is (unless the selected stop is already there); when you pause, the date it stopped on becomes the next stop, reached by Run through the dates for as long as it played, so the video plays those dates at the pace you saw. A camera move while it played becomes a Glide to where you stopped. Play again after a pause and the pause is how long the video holds on that date (up to 4 seconds). Long plays are split into stops of at most 30 seconds. The stops are saved in the video's Khipu like any other, so you can change their seconds, hold or move afterwards. Playing with the Studio closed, and the Preview, record nothing.
• Several globes in a video: with two or four globes on screen, a stop keeps them all, each with its dataset and its date (the same date, years earlier, or a fixed date). The video shows them side by side as on your screen, each labelled with its own date (and its dataset when they differ), and credits every dataset shown. A stop added with one globe goes back to one globe.
• Getting here: for every stop after the first, the Camera move that brings it in: Fly (rises, travels, comes down), Glide (a level move), Cut (at once) or Along a path (through the places you add with Add the view's centre to the path). Takes sets its seconds (left empty, the length suits the distance) and Feel how it starts and ends (Gentle, Snappy or Even).
• Data: what the data does on the way: Change at once, a Crossfade from one dataset to the next, a Wipe that sweeps the new dataset across the globe along a meridian or the day–night line, Run through the dates (the same dataset plays from the last stop's date to this one's, with the date counter running), or Through the plain Earth (the data fades out to the Earth and the next fades in).
• While it holds: the camera can stay Still, Orbit around the place, Push in or Pull out; How much sets the degrees, or the zoom.
• Effects for each stop, which never change the data inside the focus: a Spotlight at the view's centre (with its Radius, Dim outside, Grey outside and a Glowing edge; Centre it here moves it), Depth blur around a sharp centre, a Vignette, Film grain (video only), a Title card at the start of the stop, Callouts (a label at a place, with Show the value there to add the data's value on every frame, for example "Madrid · 1.9 °C"), Arrows (start one at the view's centre, then move the globe and add points; a label and a colour), a Value counter showing the data at a place as it changes, and Compare with another date: beyond a line that moves across the picture, the same data at The other date, each side named by its date.
• Templates: Start from a template sets the stops around the view on screen: Turn the globe past this place, Zoom in on this place, a Time-lapse from the dataset's first date to its last, Before and after (the first date, then the last, each with its title card), or A journey through the pins on the globe (two pins or more, from Tools → Data; a spotlight and a callout at each). Adjust them afterwards as you like.
• Finishing: Motion blur on moves (twice the credits), an End card with every data credit, Animate the logo and lower third, and Keep each stop in frame in other shapes.
• Voice-over: tick I own this recording, or have the rights to use it in this video, then choose the recording (MP3, M4A, WAV or OGG, up to 25 MB). It plays under the video from the start with soft fades, and stops where the video ends; GIFs and stills have no sound. It is kept 30 days after you upload it, only to make your videos; Remove the voice-over takes it off and deletes it. A voice-over costs no credits.
• Brand: choose a brand kit to put your outlet's logo (top right) and a lower third (just above the data credit) on the video, or make one with New brand kit: a name, a logo (PNG, JPEG or WebP; it is made smaller to travel with the shot), a lower-third line and an accent colour. A Newsroom team shares its kits. A shot keeps a copy of the kit it uses, so deleting or changing a kit never changes a video already ordered.
• Preview plays the stops on the globe in the browser: the moves, the data changes, the effects and (when you chose it in this visit) the voice-over. The video itself is rendered on a server, frame by frame, at full quality.
• Price: the panel shows the price in credits (a still image 1, a minute at 1080p 10, at 4K 30, at 8K 80). These are for one globe: a stop that shows two or four globes costs two or four times as much for its time on screen, and a still costs 1 credit per globe it shows. Media Desk includes 300 credits a year and Newsroom 3,000.
• Save and get a quote keeps the shot in your Khipus and gives its price; Order the video confirms it. Your videos lists your orders; a finished video can be downloaded for 30 days. Keep keeps it until your licence's current term ends, for 1 credit (after a renewal you can keep it again). If a render fails, its credits come back.
• On your own site: a finished video or GIF also has a Poster (its first frame) to download. Embed code gives the code for an article: a player that loads nothing until a reader presses play, or a lazy image for a GIF or still. Put the file and the poster on your own site, replace https://YOUR-SITE in the code with their address, and press Copy. Nothing in the article loads from AYNI.
• Every video carries the data credit in the picture, as the data licences require.
• Team (Newsroom): the team shares its credits, brand kits and videos. Its editors can switch on Orders need an editor's approval and tick Editor beside other members (the first person on the team to use the Studio is its first editor). With approval on, a member's order shows Waiting for an editor in Your videos, no credits are held, and the quote stands for a week; an editor presses Approve, which holds the credits and starts the render, or Decline.

Accounts and plans

What is free: with a free account, the whole Science On a Sphere catalogue and shared sessions with friends. Joining a room or a meeting through its link needs no account at all, so students never need one.

Signing in

Press Sign in (top right). Your first sign-in creates your account.

• By email: type your address and press Email me a sign-in link. Open the link in the email within 15 minutes; it works once.
• With Google: Continue with Google, when it is offered.

You stay signed in for 30 days after your last visit. Sign out and Delete account are in the same menu. Deleting your account (and with it your own data) first asks you to confirm it is you: with a passkey, or an eight-digit code sent to your address.

Plans

Plans and pricing (in the account menu, or See the plans) shows the plans for each kind of user. The same plans and prices are also on a page anyone can open without an account: vr.ayni.eu.com/pricing (en español).

The plans cover:

• situation rooms;
• research;
• education;
• everyone;
• media;
• museums.

Each card lists what the plan includes. Your plan shows the same for your licence in use, and any extras added to it (for example statistics over any region, or four globes).

Plus, Teacher, School, Researcher and Lab can be bought online where online payment is open (below). Every plan can also be bought by invoice: press Request an invoice (on an online card, Or request an invoice) or Ask for a quote, fill in the form, and the licence key is emailed when the invoice is paid.

Buying a plan online

1. Open Plans and pricing and the tab for you: Everyone (Plus), Education (Teacher, School) or Research (Researcher, Lab).
2. Plus: under Choose packages, tick one package, or All packages (two or three are sold as all four), then choose Yearly or Monthly; yearly costs about a third less. The other plans are yearly. Teacher and School: tick packages to add live data on top, or none. Researcher and Lab include every package.
3. The big price is before VAT; the line under it is what you pay in your country, with VAT. A business with an EU VAT number can add it in the checkout.
4. Press Buy. If you are not signed in, sign in first: the plan goes on your account.
5. Press Continue to payment. Paddle, our reseller, opens its checkout over the page and takes the payment; your receipt comes from Paddle.
6. The plan is on your account a moment later, in use, with no key to type: open Your plan to see it. If you already had a key for the same plan, the bought licence takes its place; a seat someone else gave you (a school's, a lab's) stays beside it.
7. School and Lab: in Your plan press Show the key to share and give the key to the people the plan covers; each signs in and enters it under Your licence key (below).

The subscription renews by itself every month or year until you cancel it. Your plan shows it: the plan, its packages, and when it renews.

• Manage subscription (in Your plan) opens Paddle's page in a new tab. Cancel there, change the card, or download invoices. A cancelled subscription keeps Plus until the end of the period you paid for.
• If a payment fails, Your plan says so and until when the plan keeps working. Update the card in Manage subscription before then, or use the link in Paddle's email: it opens the payment in AYNI XR, with no sign-in needed.
• A refund (within 14 days, Paddle handles your right to withdraw) ends the plan at once, and the subscription with it.
• The terms of use cover buying, renewal, cancelling and refunds: Terms of use (en español), also in the account menu and next to the payment button. Refunds are under Refunds.
• Deleting your account needs the subscription cancelled first.

Your licence key

Open Your plan, type the key (AYNI-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX) and press Activate. The licence stays on your account, so it works on any device where you sign in.

• A licence has one seat per person. When all seats are taken, the account used least recently gives up its seat.
• Remove from my account frees your seat for someone else.

Several licences

One account can hold up to five licences: for example your own Plus and a Teacher seat your school gave you. Each takes one seat of its own licence. You work with one of them at a time, the licence in use.

• Adding another: in Your plan, open Add another key, type the key and press Activate. With Use it now ticked (the default) the new licence is in use at once; untick it to keep the one you have.
• Switching: each licence has its own card in Your plan. The one in use says In use; press Use this one on another to switch. The account menu shows the plan in use with Switch, and Plans and pricing shows the plans you hold above its tabs.
• What stays: everything on screen stays: the datasets, the view and zoom, the open tools, your pins. What the new plan does not include closes: a stream outside its packages, globes past its number, tools it does not have. A note under the account says what closed.
• What follows the licence in use: streams, data and research tools, globes, lessons, meetings and their size, Lab space, My data and Studio credits. Your Lab space and your own data stay with their licence: switch back to see them again.
• What you keep whichever is in use: Ayni Chatbot, if any of your licences includes it, and your saved Khipus, kept as long as the licence that keeps them longest allows.
• Not while presenting: you cannot switch while you present a meeting; finish it first.
• When a licence ends: if the licence in use ends or is taken away, the current licence that ends last is used instead, and a note says so once.
• Remove from my account on a card removes only that licence and frees its seat.

Privacy and your data

• Usage reports are sent only if you allow them. Change your choice in Tools → More → Privacy settings…: Essential, Research or Off.
• Remember the datasets I open (Recently viewed): off unless you said yes. Switch it on or off, or Clear visit history. This memory stays on your device; switching it off deletes it.
• Feedback is kept for up to 24 months.
• Ayni Chatbot: your questions go to an AI model to be answered and are not stored; the conversation is gone when you close the tab.
• Accounts keep your email address. An account with no licence and no sign-in for 24 months is deleted.
• Playlists, when you are signed in, are kept on your account: their names and the datasets in them, nothing else. They are deleted with the account.
• Research records are made only after you press Record this session, and are anonymous unless you tick Put my name on the record. Saved, they are kept until your licence ends plus 30 days, and deleted with the account.
• Lab space keeps only what you press Share on, for the people who hold a seat of your licence, with your name on it. It is kept until the licence ends plus 30 days; what you shared is deleted with your account.
• Searching: a moment after you stop typing, your search text is sent to our server to find datasets related by meaning. It is not stored.
• Datasets and maps come from AYNI's own servers: the NOAA datasets are kept by AYNI, the globe's clouds are the newest picture from AYNI's own cloud stream, and our server fetches the street and terrain maps for you, so those services do not see your address.
• Your own data (Researcher and Lab plans) is encrypted in your browser before it is sent, kept in a private store in the EU, and shown only to you and your lab; see Your own data. Usage reports never name a private dataset.

The full policy is at vr.ayni.eu.com/privacy. The terms of use are at vr.ayni.eu.com/terms (en español).

Keyboard shortcuts

Help, feedback and troubleshooting

• Help (top right) has a short guide and a Feedback form for bug reports and ideas. You can attach a picture of the screen.
• Language: the app is in English, Spanish and Catalan. Choose Català, English or Español in the account menu (top right) or in Tools → More → Language; the page reloads in that language and this browser remembers it. A browser set to Spanish or Catalan opens in that language the first time. Lessons and Khipus that have no Catalan text show their Spanish. A few older parts still show English. Dataset names and descriptions, and the lessons, are in English.
• A live stream does not play on an iPhone: live streams need iOS 17.1 or later. Update the iPhone, then reload the page.
• A stream stutters or stays black: some live streams are very detailed and need a fast connection (over 35 Mbit/s for the largest). Try another dataset, or a wired or faster connection.
• "Immersive AR/VR isn't available on this device or browser": use a Quest headset or Chrome on an Android device with AR support.
• Pins say "Nothing to read here": the pin is outside the dataset's area, or the data has not loaded yet.
• A meeting link opens but nothing happens: the presenter may not have started yet; you are in the lobby. Meeting links last 8 hours.

What works where