GPlates

GPlates is open-source application software offering a novel combination of interactive plate-tectonic reconstructions, geographic information system (GIS) functionality and raster data visualization.
History.
The GPlates project was started by Professor Dietmar Müller in 2006. By the end of 2010, the GPlates 1.0.0 was released.
The latest release is GPlates 2.2 in August 2019. A user manual and tutorials are available online.
Functionality.
GPlates enables both the visualization and the manipulation of plate-tectonic reconstructions and associated data through geological time:
Contributors.
GPlates is developed by an international team of scientists and professional software developers at:
with past contributions from:
Adoption.
GPlates is used by geophysicists, students and researchers in academic institutions, government departments and industry. It has also gained currency in the creative worldbuilding community as a tool for maintaining realism or verisimilitude in geographic features. In 2019, two Australian researchers used the software to create a tectonic map of the continents within the fictional "Game of Thrones" universe.
Implementation.
GPlates runs on Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and Ubuntu. GPlates is written in C++ and uses OpenGL to render its 3D globe and 2D map views. It uses Qt as a GUI framework. The Boost C++ library has also been widely used. Other libraries include GDAL, CGAL, proj, qwt and GLEW.
Information Model.
GPGIM and GPML.
GPlates uses the GPlates Geological Information Model (GPGIM) to represent geological data in a Plate tectonics context. The GPlates Markup Language (GPML) is an XML implementation of the GPGIM derived from the Geography Markup Language (GML).
GPlates Python Binding.
The GPlates Python library (pyGPlates) enables access to GPlates functionality via the Python programming language. It allows users to use GPlates in a programmatic way and hence provides much more flexibility than the GPlates desktop interface can offer. The pyGPlates is available for download. Reference documentation and tutorials are also available for download.
The PyGPlates beta revision 28 was released on 08 August 2020. This is the first version which supports Python3.
Licensing.
GPlates is released under GNU General Public License version 2.0 (GPLv2) and the source code can be found on SourceForge
GPlates Portal.
The GPlates Web Portal is a gateway to a series of GPlates-based web applications. The portal was launched in 2014. Michael Chin is the architect and chief programmer. Initially the portal was hosted on nectar cloud. Later on, it was migrated to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. Below is a list of applications in GPlates Web Portal.
The Cesium Javascript library is used to render the 3D globe in a web browser.
Select Publications.
Below is a list of select publications of GPlates.