Organizational Hierarchies for Real-Time, 4D Visualizations
Jacques Haus, Gregory P. Newton, William Ribarsky, Nickolas L. Faust, Larry F. Hodges · SMARTech Repository (Georgia Institute of Technology) · 1996
This paper describes a 4D object hierarchy that is appropriate for the immense amount of time-dependent, 3D data associated with large scale simulations or information spaces. An organizational hierarchy approach is developed that can also handle elements not contained in the organization. Using this flexible approach, even complex scenarios with constantly moving, changing objects can be displayed and explored in real-time with minimal clutter. The user may also move objects around by direct manipulation, define paths, create or delete hierarchical elements, and make other interactions. To strengthen the capacity for distributed simulations and for using sensor information from multiple sources, DIS capability has been integrated with this approach for dynamic updates of position, direction and speed, and hierarchical structure. The paper will discuss how the techniques used here can be applied to widely different organizational structures.