The AD4 project has developed a three-dimension (3D) air situation display (3D radar picture) based on the representation of visual elements within a purely synthetic 3D virtual environment. Such virtual environment provides a 3D perspective display of the air traffic control (ATC) sector.
The implementation of such 3D Virtual Environment is based on a 3D framework, called D3 (D-cube) developed by NEXT in a national research project. Such framework has been successfully enhanced and tailored to the ATC domain in the course of the AD4 project.
More specifically, D3 is a 3D Virtual Reality system for real time visual representation and manipulation of heterogeneous geo-referenced data such as digital elevation model (DEM), meteorological data (clouds, pressure and wind fields), telemetry data, global navigation satellite system (GNSS) data, surveillance data (radar tracks) and flight plan data. D3 framework is capable of both 3D visualisation and 3D navigation.
3D visualisation results from the integration of heterogeneous data, structured into layers. Throughput and elaboration limitations are overcome by a scalable and distributed architecture. 3D navigation is allowed by the use of both specific (3D mouse, a six degrees of freedom device) and standard (classical mouse) input devices.
A test-bed to experiment with and validate the use of 3D/4D displays in the air traffic management (ATM) domain has been constructed by the integration with well known and consolidated simulation platforms in the ATC domain, like Eurocontrol 'Escape' and Vitrociset ATRES. Such integrated environment has been successfully used to evaluate the most relevant 4D human-machine interface (HMI) concept and representations by real-time human-in-the-loop simulations with the involvement of controllers and simulation of the operational ATC environment. Interoperability with external systems has been a targeted objective of the projects, achieved by the supports of standard exchange formats (e.g. Asterix) and CORBA IDL interfaces for the ATC domain (e.g. Avenue).