REAL-TIME VISUALIZATION OF REMOTELY SENSED DATASETS USING PC DISPLAY ENGINES: EXAMPLES FROM VENUS

Working with remotely sensed data can be tedious and time consuming. Computers are used to ease the interpretation, frequently to create static images of key features. The computational power of the personal computer (PC) has increased dramatically in recent years. Advances in graphics display hardware have made the calculations behind rendering large 3D datasets easier, and that technology is available on the mass market, to the general public and scientific community at-large.

Using available tools for the PC, specifically eschewing high powered mainframe and parallel processing computer applications, useful, navigable models of these remotely sensed data can be developed. In some cases, these models can emulate the field experience, or at the very least, simulate expensive aircraft/spacecraft reconnaissance expeditions. These models can be a boon to both active research in remote locales as well as a teaching/demonstration aid to researchers on their return.

Examples from the NASA Magellan Venus mission's SAR data were rendered in the modelling engine. This proof of concept provides a powerful visual display of this data and demonstrates the ease of creating complex, real-time, multiuser graphic representations of 3D data.