Using 3D and information visualisation to improve perception and facilitate situation awareness

Abstract

CSIR engineers are developing a 3D viewer library called Sentience3D. The goal is to aid users and developers of simulations in building the visualisation tools they need to achieve the required level of situation awareness in their virtual environment simulations. The library makes use of open source building blocks and is itself moving towards a Lesser General Public Licence (LGPL). Online or offline simulation traces are used to populate a virtual environment similar to Google Earth with 3D representations of all the simulation entities. The virtual environment is then visually augmented with additional information such as entity relationships and model state. Having an adequate level of situation awareness is very important for decision makers in fields such as aviation, air traffic control, and military command and control. It is, however, of equal importance to have a high level of situation awareness when attempting to make sense of and use complex simulation traces and results. This paper and the accompanying poster describe the long-term vision for 3D visualisation, some use cases and the design of Sentience3D. Instances of impact in the domains of the current SANDF and international clients are also presented