Article Entry
05 Jan 2012
Comments:1
New Immersive 3-D System Allows Participants Across the Globe to Analyze and Visualize Shared Data
Added by USGIF Category: Daily Intelligence Brief, General
USGIF member company BAE Systems is working to develop an immersive 3-D system that allows participants from across the globe to better analyze and visualize shared data. From importing historic or real-time information from different sources ranging from databases and web feeds, through social network and computer network data, to real-world sensors, GPS trackers and the like, the application will allow users to view the data in multiple environments. These include a virtual command center for operations management (pictured), as well as a configurable 3-D “holodeck” space for more abstract data. In addition to conventional 2-D displays, the system will be able to plot both graphs and networks in 3-D, which makes it easier to analyze large quantities of multidimensional data, as well as show video feeds and images.
In addition, NASA is now using image processing algorithms to transform legacy data from the Apollo Metric Camera onboard the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 spacecraft into this immersive environment to map of a part of the moon.
Here’s more about this application from Vision Systems:
The maps are the result of three years of work by the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) at NASA Ames, and are available to view through the NASA Lunar Mapping and Modeling Portal (LMMP) and Google Moon feature in Google Earth.
The software has now been released in several open-source libraries including Ames Stereo Pipeline, Neo-Geography Toolkit, and NASA Vision Workbench.
The Apollo Zone project uses imagery recently scanned at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, by a team from Arizona State University. The source images themselves are large — 20,000 pixels by 20,000 pixels — and the IRG aligned and processed more than 4000 of them using Ames’ Pleiades supercomputer.
In the future, the team plans to expand the use of their algorithms to include imagery taken at angles, rather than just straight down at the surface. A technique called photoclinometry allows 3-D terrain to be reconstructed from a single 2-D image by comparing how surfaces sloping toward the sun appear brighter than areas that slope away from it.
Tags: 3D GEOINT, BAE and Immersive 3D systems, BAE Systems, GEOINT, geospatial intelligence, NASA Maps the Moon
Mechdyne has been delivering immersive VR environments for DoD (incl. command & control (C2) centers) for years. It’s not clear what is new here.