Introduction to Investigating requirements for the design of a 3D weather visualization environment for air traffic controllers
This chapter involves a long-term investigation into the applicability of three-dimensional (3D) interfaces for Air Traffic Control Officers (ATCOs). This investigation is part of collaboration between EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre (EEC) and the Norrköping Visualization and Interaction Studio (NVIS) of Linköping University in which a test-bed was developed in order to evaluate the different features of a 3D interface for ATCOs. This test- bed, known as the 3D-Air Traffic Control (3D-ATC) application, provides controllers with a detailed semi-immersive stereoscopic 3D representation of air traffic. Different aspects of the 3D-ATC application include 3D visualization and interactive resolution of potential conflict between flights (Lange et al., 2006), a voice command interface for visualizing air traffic (Lange et al., 2003), and interactive 3D weather images (Bourgois et al., 2005). Among these various features, the 3D weather visualization was chosen as a first case for carrying out a more accurate users’ study. Weather is considered as one …