Strait of Hormuz in 3D: a virtual tour from a ship's deck
Stand on the bridge wing of a tanker and look around the Strait of Hormuz in 3D. This interactive 3D map is built at true scale from NASA elevation data and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, with five places to stand between the tip of Oman's Musandam Peninsula and the anchorage off Hormuz Island. The other ships are drawn where AIS last reported them.
The other ships in the 3D view are real: each is drawn at its last reported AIS position, the same positions as on the live ship map, which shows 1,436 AIS-visible vessels in and around the strait right now. Only ships within 60 km of where you stand are drawn, and a position can be hours old. The ship you stand on is a model.
How to look around the Strait of Hormuz in 3D
Press Start the 3D view, then drag to turn your head. Everything else is optional. If the keys do nothing, click on the view first.
| Do this | What happens |
|---|---|
| Drag, or the arrow keys | Look around. On a phone, drag sideways with one finger; swiping up or down scrolls the page as usual. In full screen you can also look up and down. |
| Scroll, or pinch | Zoom in on the coast, like raising binoculars. Inside the page the scroll wheel zooms after you have clicked on the view; in full screen it always zooms. |
| Keys 1 to 5 | Move to another place in the strait. The same places are buttons at the top of the view. |
| F, or the Full screen button | Fill the whole screen. Press F or Esc to come back. |
| H | Hide the controls for a clean view. Press H again to bring them back. |
| L | Turn the labels for places and ships on or off. |
| Click a ship's name | Open that ship's page on this site in a new tab. |
| Settings | Change the time of day (daylight hours, local time in the strait), the visibility in kilometres and the field of view, and hide the other ships. |
Strait of Hormuz virtual tour: five places to stand
Strait of Hormuz geography →The tour has five stops, and each one sits on this site's own geometry: the two shipping lanes, the line where we count crossings, and the anchorage areas where we count waiting ships. Your eyes are 26 m above the sea, so the sea horizon is 19.5 km away.
| Place | Where the ship is | What you can see |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Off Ras Musandam26.410° N, 56.380° E | Under way at 12 knots in the outbound lane (eastbound, to the Gulf of Oman), where it rounds the tip of Musandam. | The nearest shore is 2.4 km to the south. The ridge above the village of Kumzar is about 10 km away. Larak Island, 50 km to the north, barely clears the horizon; Qeshm and the Iranian coast are below it. |
| 2. Khasab Bay26.243° N, 56.258° E | At anchor among the inlets of Musandam, 6.6 km north of the town of Khasab. | Mountains 400 to 850 m high stand 7 to 10 km away on three sides. They rise higher above the horizon here than at any of the other four places. |
| 3. Mid-strait26.620° N, 56.520° E | Under way at 12 knots in the inbound lane (westbound, into the Gulf), between Musandam and Larak. | Great Quoin Island is 13 km to the south. Jazirat Musandam, 28 km south, and Larak, 31 km to the north-north-west, are thin strips on the horizon. |
| 4. On the counting line26.700° N, 56.894° E | Under way at 12 knots where the inbound lane crosses our counting line from Musandam to Kuhestak. | The Iranian shore is about 16 km to the north-east and low: the beach sits on the horizon. On a clear day the hills behind it show, 55 to 85 km away. |
| 5. Larak–Hormuz anchorage27.000° N, 56.450° E | At anchor on the northern edge of the Larak and Qeshm anchorage area, 3.4 km south of Hormuz Island. | Hormuz Island is close to the north, Larak 18 km to the south-south-west and Qeshm 19 km to the west. The mountain Kuh-e Genu stands behind Bandar Abbas, 55 km away. |
Distances and what shows above the horizon were measured in the elevation data the view is built from, for an eye 26 m above the sea. The shipping lanes and the counting line are the approximate ones drawn on the map of shipping lanes and anchorages. At its narrowest the strait is 21 nautical miles (39 km) wide, between Great Quoin Island and Larak Island (IEA, Feb 2026; Wikipedia: Strait of Hormuz, accessed 29 Sep 2026).
Ships in the Strait of Hormuz, shown in 3D
Live ship map →The other ships in the view are real vessels. Each one comes from this site's AIS feed and is drawn at its last reported position, so the 3D map shows where ships are waiting and moving, seen from the water instead of from above.
Right now
- 1,436 AIS-visible vessels in and around the strait, all on the live ship map.
- 485 ships waiting on the Gulf of Oman side and 110 on the Gulf side; see ships waiting at the Strait of Hormuz.
- The count of ships that crossed today is on Strait of Hormuz traffic.
How to read the ships
- The view draws the ships within 60 km of where you stand, up to the nearest 60. How many you see depends on the place and the day.
- A label gives the name, the type and the distance. Click the name to open that ship's page.
- "Seen 16 h ago" on a label means the position is that old. The ship may have moved since.
- Most ships are small on the horizon, as they are from a real deck. Scroll or pinch to zoom in.
Counts are AIS-visible only. Ships that switch their transponders off are not on the map and not in the 3D view. How we count.
What is real in this 3D map of the Strait of Hormuz, and what is not
The land is real data shown at true scale, and the other ships are where AIS last reported them. The ship you stand on, the look of the other ships and the sea state are not real.
Real
- The shape of the land. Heights come from the Terrain Tiles open dataset, which in this area is NASA's SRTM survey with a height roughly every 30 m.
- The colour of the land. Sentinel-2 cloudless satellite imagery by EOX, at 10 m per pixel, from 2016 and 2017.
- The scale. Heights are not exaggerated. Distances and bearings from where you stand are true, and the curve of the Earth is included, which is why low coasts sink below the horizon.
- The sun. It is where it would be in the strait today at the local time you choose.
- The places. The lanes, the counting line and the anchorage area are the ones this site uses to count ships.
- Where the other ships are. Each one is an AIS-visible vessel from this site's feed, drawn at its last reported position, pointing along its reported heading (or its course when no heading is sent) and scaled to its reported length. The view fetches positions when it starts and again every minute. A label gives the ship's name, type and distance.
Not real
- The ship you stand on. It is a generic 240 m tanker, not a real vessel, placed at each of the five places.
- What the other ships look like. Every ship is drawn with the same tanker model, whatever its type, so a tug looks like a very small tanker. Between two updates a moving ship is carried along its reported course at its reported speed, which is an estimate.
- Ships without a recent signal. A ship that has stopped transmitting stays where it was last seen, and its label says how long ago that was. In the strait itself many positions are hours old. A ship that never transmits is not shown at all.
- The weather. The sea is always the same moderate breeze, with waves of about 0.7 m. There are no clouds and no night.
- Fine detail on land. Data at 30 m cannot show cliffs, buildings or ports, so close-up texture is generated. Anything built after 2017 is missing.
- The haze. Visibility is a slider, not a measurement. It starts at 50 km, a clear day.
This is an illustration of the geography with last reported ship positions added. It is not a navigation aid and not a camera view of current conditions. For what is happening now, see whether the Strait of Hormuz is open and how many ships crossed today.
More maps of the Strait of Hormuz
Live ship map of the Strait of Hormuz
Every AIS-visible ship in and around the strait, with its name, flag, speed and declared destination, refreshed every 20 seconds.
1,436 vessels visible on AIS right now
Strait of Hormuz map
A labelled map of the strait with Iran, Oman's Musandam Peninsula, the United Arab Emirates and the islands. Free to reuse with credit.
485 ships waiting on the Gulf of Oman side, 110 on the Gulf side
Strait of Hormuz geography
Where the strait is, how wide and deep it is, its islands and shipping lanes, and who controls it.
1 under way within 60 km of the counting line
Quick answers
All questions →Is there a 3D map of the Strait of Hormuz?
Yes, this page. It is a free interactive 3D map of the Strait of Hormuz that runs in your browser, with no login and nothing to install. The land is built from NASA elevation data and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery at true scale, you look around from the deck of a ship at five places, and the other ships are drawn at their last reported AIS positions. For a flat, labelled map, see the Strait of Hormuz map.
What does the Strait of Hormuz look like from a ship?
Mostly open water with land low on the horizon. On the Omani side the bare mountains of the Musandam Peninsula rise straight from the sea, and a ship rounding the tip passes within a few kilometres of them. The Iranian side is lower and further from the shipping lanes, so from mid-strait it is a thin strip. Start the view above and press 1 to 5 to compare.
Based on the elevation data the view is built from; see five places to stand.
Can you see both shores of the Strait of Hormuz from a ship?
From the middle of the strait, on a clear day, yes, but only just. From 26 m above the sea the horizon is 19.5 km away, and the strait is 39 km wide at its narrowest, so the shorelines themselves are near or below the horizon and what you see is the higher ground behind them. From the outbound lane off the tip of Musandam, the Iranian coast is below the horizon. Lower the visibility in Settings to see how quickly haze hides the far side. The strait's width, depth and shipping lanes are covered in Strait of Hormuz geography.
Width: IEA, Feb 2026. Horizon and sight lines: computed for this view.
Is this a live view of the Strait of Hormuz?
Partly. It is not a camera: the land is a model built from survey data and the weather is fixed. The other ships are live in the sense that each is drawn at its last reported AIS position, updated every minute, but they all share one ship model, a position can be hours old, and ships that do not transmit are missing. For every ship at once use the live ship map, which shows 1,436 AIS-visible vessels right now, and for today's crossings see Strait of Hormuz traffic.
Is there a live webcam of the Strait of Hormuz?
Not on this site. hormuz.now does not run a camera in the strait, and this 3D view is a model, not a live camera. What is live here is ship positions: the live ship map shows every AIS-visible vessel, and the same last reported positions are drawn in the 3D view above.
Is this a live satellite view of the Strait of Hormuz?
No. The satellite imagery is Sentinel-2 cloudless by EOX, a cloud-free mosaic of images taken in 2016 and 2017. It shows the land as it was then and does not update. Only the ships update, from AIS, about once a minute.
Source: Sentinel-2 cloudless, EOX.
Can I see the Strait of Hormuz in VR (virtual reality)?
It is experimental. In a browser that reports a headset, an Enter VR button appears in Settings and puts you on the bridge wing at real scale. We have run it only in an emulated headset so far, not on a physical one, and it may be too heavy for a standalone headset. On a computer or phone, use Full screen instead.
Which data is the 3D view built from?
Elevation from the Terrain Tiles open dataset on AWS (NASA SRTM, USGS GMTED2010 and NOAA ETOPO1) and imagery from Sentinel-2 cloudless by EOX IT Services GmbH, which contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data from 2016 and 2017 and is licensed CC BY 4.0. Both are loaded by your browser when you start the view. Ship positions come from this site's own AIS feed, the one behind the live ship map. The shipping lanes, counting line and anchorage area are this site's own.
Sources: Terrain Tiles, Registry of Open Data on AWS; Sentinel-2 cloudless, EOX.
Live AIS data as of · 1,436 vessels visible in the region. Counts are AIS-visible only and miss ships running dark. How we count.