Full text of the
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There were three areas of developing technology that I thought would make research in the deep waters of the oceans much more effective in the future. ... The third is the progress that is being made in computer science and data communication. Deep water research involves immense amounts of data. I have the impression that much more time is being spent in collecting data than in looking at it and analyzing it. We believe that situation can be greatly improved.
- David Packard, August 28, 1988
MBARI excels in measuring and observing oceanographic phenomena; however, our scientists and the greater oceanographic community could spend more time looking at and analyzing their data. This project aims to synthesize our various data sets for visualization in a common, compelling, efficient, and easy-to-use system. Tools will be developed to automatically create rich 3-dimensional worlds that can be viewed inside a web browser.
This is a three year proposal that aims to provide an easy to use system for viewing all data associated with MBARI's Remote Operated Vehicle dives. Please read the following, you'll need the Acrobat reader.
Full text of the
proposal (if this comes up blank, hit your browser's Back and then the Forward
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In the summer of 1997 MBARI intern Jenny Washburn was presented with the opportunity to learn VRML with the intention of applying this emerging technology to visualizing MBARI's ROV dive data. Our first goal was to evaluate whether geographic data can be successfully co-located in the VRML coordinate system. As a test we combined digital elevation model data, a terrain image, ROV navigation data points, and video frame grab images into a VRML coded virtual world. A perl script was written to blend these data sources with the VRML constructs. Several Ventana dives processed by this script are available at the VRML Views link on the R/V Point Lobos Expeditions page on the CanyonHead web site.
To view the VRML worlds in your browser please download the latest player for your system. Most people at MBARI are using CosmoPlayer, but Intervista has a version of WorldView for Macintosh computers.
CosmoPlayer by Cosmo Software/SGI at cosmosoftware.com
WorldView by Intervista at www.intervista.com
Perhaps the best example of success in reaching the first goal is the 1997111 Ventana expedition (sorry, internal link) where the dive depth was shallow enough to give us relatively good navigation. The dive track can be seen to travel on a benthic transect and curve up into a swale that is represented in the shaded image of the terrain.
Click on the above image to go to the Monterey Bay ROV Dive Visualization page. (For best performance please try to run on systems equiped with texture-mapping graphics hardware.)
Jenny's PowerPoint presentation of her project is here.
For our proposed 1999-2001 work we will take what we've learned from last year's prototype and incorporate new features with a focus on delivering data visualization over the web. Please see the VRML world of the Kohala region from the March 1998 Hawaii mapping expedition. As time permits in 1998 we will incorporate techniques such as those documented at the sites below and then build worlds of all our mapped areas.
Mike McCann
VRML coding, data conversionAdditional members for 1999 and beyond (if project is approved)
Dr. Bruce Robison Mesopelagic science
requirements
Dr. Jim Barry Benthic science requirements
Prof. Don Brutzman Underwater
environments, networking, and VRML expertise
Craig (T.C.) Dawe ROV operations
Rich Schramm Project management, data streams
Jenny Paduan Samples information, beta tester for
web products
Mike McCann, 09 November 1998