Superworkstations for Terrain Visualization: A Prospectus

Abstract

Terrain modeling and visualization is emerging as a key requirement for tactical mission planning, rehearsal, and battle management systems. This study assesses the match between commercial superworkstation computers and the needs of deployable, unit level systems for these applications. Superworkstations are shown to be functionally well suited to terrain visualization. A prototype terrain visualization system, hosted on a Silicon Graphics IRIS 4D/240GTX workstation is discussed. This prototype demonstrates the concepts developed in this study by exhibiting features such as an out-the- window perspective terrain scene synthesized from Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) databases, Landsat images inset into the geometric terrain model, head-up display (HUD) simulation, radar detection envelope representation, haze effects, lighting effects based on time of day and date, and a God's eye-view viewport display. Finally, topics for continued investigation into superworkstation and terrain visualization are covered.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1991
Accession Number
ADA238926

Entities

People

  • D. A. Southard

Organizations

  • Rome Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Sensors
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Application Software
  • Battle Management
  • Computational Science
  • Computer Graphics
  • Computers
  • Detection
  • Geographic Information Systems
  • Graphics
  • Human-Machine Interaction
  • Image Processing
  • Information Systems
  • Interactive Graphics
  • Prototypes
  • Reliability
  • Three Dimensional
  • Visualizations

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Vision.
  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).