Challenges in 3d visualization for mars exploration rover mission science planning

Abstract

Abstract-The Science Activity Planner (SAP), currently un-der development by our group at the Jet Propulsion Labora-tory, will be the primary tool used for science data assess-ment and science activity planning during the Mars Explo-ration Rover (MER) mission. As part of its data visualiza-tion capability, SAP interactively displays 3D terrain sur-face data corresponding to the MER image data products. These datasets can be very large, e.g. on the order of tens of millions of vertices for a panorama, so it is a challenge to load and display them at interactive speeds on a worksta-tion. We describe the software techniques we are implement-ing to address this challenge and present recent test results. A fundamental development is the new Visible Scalable Ter-rain (ViSTa) format, a flexible and precise interchange format for terrain data. Other developments include multi-threaded