Description of the interface

The graphical interface is divided into 3 windows.

The VIZ interface

The 3D visualization window
The Toolset window (side window)
The Display window (bottom window)

3D Visualization window

This window renders the 3-dimensional scene. The scene includes any 3D object you load into VIZ, such as photo-realistic terrain models, synthetic (or CAD) models of the robotic system, etc.

Be default, you will get a perspective view of the scene. Using the mouse in this window, you can navigate in the 3D world, look around, zoom onto a feature, popup different views, inspect the wireframe of the terrain, and also perform different operations on the scene or interact with the models.

On Silicon Graphics Octane and Onyx workstation, VIZ can display the scene in stereo-mode, to give a 3D effect with the Stereographics glasses.

The Toolset window

The Toolset window allows you to access all the tools and functions of the VIZ software package by clicking on the appropriate button.

The Toolset window is vertically divided into 2 parts. The upper part contains the main toolset buttons that are described below. The lower part contains the widgets associated with the current selected tool that you are using.

The upper part is divided into 3 sets of buttons:

top row:

Allows you to load models into VIZ
Lets you access miscellaneous setup functions.
Gives you a catalog of available datasets

Viewers functions

Allows you to access different viewing modes.

Analysis tools

Lets you perform measurements.

The Display window

The Display window displays information to the user.

The Display window is horizontally divided into 2 parts. The left part contains the information displayed by the current toolset (for example Distance for a distance measurement, Point coordinates for a point measurement).
The right part called "Viz Com Traffic" displays status messages from the 3D visualization window. For instance, it will display an "object_added" message whenever an object is loaded, etc.