Example Scenes

This scene describes the basic navigation controls for Makai Voyager, and should give you a good feel for working with the 3D viewer. After finishing this scene, you should be able to: switch between the workspace browser and Makai Voyager's 3D interactive viewing mode; easily navigate through Makai Voyager's 3D environment using mouse controls and navigation buttons; load and edit the appearance preferences of a GeoTIFF; and toggle latitude longitude lines.

The datasets used in this scene are the low-resolution Blue Marble and SRTM30_PLUS datasets bundled with Makai Voyager, as well as a GeoTIFF overlay called "Aircraft Contrails."

The Aircraft Contrails terrain overlay is a geo-referenced TIFF image. The image shows contrails -- or vapor trails -- created by aircraft engine exhaust. NASA scientists have found that cirrus clouds, formed by contrails from aircraft engine exhaust, are capable of increasing average surface temperatures enough to account for a warming trend in the United States that occurred between 1975 and 1994. The original data was provided by NASA's Earth Observatory.

Combining realistic survey data with attractive satellite or aerial imagery is a useful presentation option available to Makai Voyager users.

This scene will demonstrate how to load and visualize two different elevation and bathymetry datasets, and overlay satellite imagery on top of the elevation data. After finishing this scene, you should be able to: load data sets from a remote server; tell the difference in resolution between elevation datasets; and overlay imagery data onto elevation data.

Datasets used in this scene are: the default SRTM30_PLUS elevation data, as well as the Hawaiian Islands Elevation, Hawaii Islands Imagery, and Island of Oahu Imagery datasets.

Appearance is important when displaying scientific visualizations to any audience. For this reason, Makai Voyager comes equipped with a wide range of appearance preferences that are fully customizable.

We have prepared two videos to help you learn more about terrain appearance preferences using the full-resolution SRTM30_PLUS Elevation dataset:

• Terrain Layer Preferences: This video shows you how to customize the appearance of a single terrain elevation layer. After viewing this video, you should be able to: edit the global viewing mode; exaggerate elevation data; scale elevation data; toggle and customize contour and latitude longitude lines; create a custom colormap for elevation data; customize a dataset legend; and modify lighting preferences specific to a terrain layer.
• Global Terrain Preferences: This video shows the global preferences for terrain, including how to: toggle and customize global latitude longitude lines; customize lighting preferences, coordinate style, display units, and background colors; and edit the date-time policy for time-varying data.

LIDAR is an increasingly popular optical remote sensing technology that can map out the surface of a target by illuminating it with light. These light points can be aggregated into large datasets that define the shapes of buildings, objects and terrain, and can be geo-referenced to their appropriate location above the earth.

Makai Voyager allows users to load and interact with large LIDAR datasets, and supports overlaying LIDAR with other data types, such as web map services and elevation data.

This scene will demonstrate how to load and visualize a LIDAR dataset overlaid onto a map. After watching this video, you should be able to: stream LIDAR data from a remote server; stream web map services (WMS) from a remote server; and view and interact with LIDAR data.

The datasets used in this scene are the default SRTM30_PLUS elevation dataset, as well as a WMS layer of vector features for Canada, and a LIDAR dataset called The Wright State 100 of a section of Ottawa, Canada.

Makai Voyager has the capability to simultaneously download multiple terrain layers from Web Map Service (WMS) servers running on the Internet or local network. You can load your own WMS data sources by using the File>Open URL... menu item or toolbar button.

This scene is configured with multiple WMS terrain layers from both the NASA OnEarth and USGS Seamless Data Warehouse servers:

• GeoCover 2000 Mosaic: A mosaic of hundreds of Landsat 7 images (bands 7, 4, 2) covering the earth. The data has been pansharpened, and has approximately 15m per pixel horizontal resolution. Makai Voyager can toggle between the 7-4-2 spectral image and approximate true color images.
• ASTER DEM: This elevation layer is a subsampled version of the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Map (GDEM). The highest resolution is 1/2400 degrees per pixel (1.5 arc-seconds per pixel). (Note: This layer does not contain bathymetry depths.)
• SRTM30_PLUS: A Makai Voyager pre-processed version of the SRTM30_PLUS global terrain topography and bathymetry data, originally from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego.
• USGS 1m Aerial Imagery: From the USGS, this WMS layer provides a 1-meter mosaic of natural and color-infrared aerial imagery. The primary source of imagery was the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP).
• NASA Daily Planet: A satellite imagery composite of earth from space. Archival composites range from 2006 to 2010 at approximately 250m per pixel.

Recent earthquake and tsunami events in the Pacific and Indian oceans illustrate the importance of policy and technology in handling these unexpeced, large-scale disasters.

This scene demonstrates Makai Voyager's capability to visualize dynamic scientific data mapped to the ocean surface. The data shown is a simulation of the wave amplitude from the Chile tsunami, generated from an 8.8 magnitude earthquake, on Saturday, February 27, 2010. This simulation was carried out by the NOAA Center for Tsunami Research, which can accurately predict tsunami propagation using real-time models. To learn more about this tsunami, visit the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) synopsis page about the Chilean tsunami event.

Makai Ocean Engineering, Inc. encourages you to learn more about these devastating events, and to donate your time or money to support relief efforts. The American Red Cross provides worldwide humanitarian support, and the American Institute of Philanthropy has a listing of other relief organizations for recent earthquake and tsunami events.

Use of this data does not constitute a NOAA endorsement of Makai Voyager by the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), or the NOAA Center for Tsunami Research (NCTR). Neither the U.S. Government, nor any agency or employee thereof, makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to the Product provided, including but not limited to the implied warranties or merchantability and fitness for any particular purpose. In no event shall the U.S. Government, nor any agency or employee thereof, be liable for any direct, indirect, or consequential damages flowing from the use of the product provided.

Ocean modeling is a critical component of modern marine science. In this scene, we highlight Makai Voyager's visualization capabilities on the U.S. Navy Operational Global Ocean Model (NCOM). The scene will load with a recent NCOM simulation of the water off the east coast of Japan for the period starting on December 5, 2011.

The following NCOM regions are also available for that date (click individual files to load into your current view):

• Fukushima: Coastal Japan waters (34-40N, 138-145E);
• Hawaii: Central Pacific around Hawaiian Islands (15-29N, 166W-152W);
• U.S. California Coast: Water off of western United States (25-40N, 125-111W); and,
• U.S. East: Waters off the east coast of the United States (20-42N, 82-64W).

The full version of Makai Voyager has drag-and-drop import of large ocean volumetric data, in raw binary and NetCDF formats. Daily NCOM ocean model data are available at NOAA's Ocean Prediction Center and through the Northern Gulf Institute's Ecosystem Data Assembly Center. A good introduction to the NCOM model was written by Barron et al., and is available on the U.S. Naval Research Lab website.

Hurricane Isabel was a Category 5 storm that made landfall across the southern United States in mid-September 2003. In this scene we explore the hurricane as it makes landfall, animating the wind speed and precipitation variables from a multi-variate simulation of the extreme weather event. Makai Voyager can smoothly animate large volumes, and can perform interactive operations such as clipping and slicing.

This dataset was made available as part of the IEEE Visualization 2004 Contest. The contest website has more information about the original volume data, and the National Hurricane Center also provides a synopsis of Hurricane Isabel on its website.

Makai Ocean Engineering, Inc. would like to thank Bill Kuo, Wei Wang, Cindy Bruyere, Tim Scheitlin, and Don Middleton of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) for providing the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model simulation data of Hurricane Isabel.