Re: Free GIS for realtime data and 3D visualization?

Hi Peter,

If you want genuine 3D+ capabilities, do look into OpenDX. I've done
interactive 3D plots, with land & sea terrain models (each in a different
vertical scale & with a different color map), a translucent sea surface plane,
elevation contours  showing daily mid-water fish catches using 3D symbols for
catch locations. The user could interact with this to choose the column
(dimension) to size & colour the symbols (glyphs), total catch, target species
catch, size of vessel, mean length of target species for size & time of day,
vessel type, % target species, etc. for colour.

While I built this as an animation with each day as a frame, it was also
interactive so the user could rotate, zoom, stop, start, rewind, etc. DX is
implemented as a data flow model, rather than a traditional programming
paradigm, with data moving through user selected & configured modules to
generate the required output. 

OpenDX is not strictly a GIS, but a multi-dimensional visualisation tool. It
was  used for 3D terrain visualisations long before traditional GIS tools
started coping with 3D (& most GIS tools still don't, they manage surfaces, not
volumes).  


See:
http://opendx.sdsc.edu/animations/gis/raelakes.mpg
http://opendx.sdsc.edu/animations/environmental/calabasas.mpg

for examples. 

In DX there are controls to make such things interactive & very responsive.
Vizualisations, Inc is a company which provides commercial support & training
for DX if required.

IBM's training notes are available, see 
http://www.research.ibm.com/dx/proceedings/cart/tutorint.htm
for an example.

I'm not saying that other Open Source GIS tools are not able to do this, just
that there are alternatives which are not traditionally regarded as GIS, which
may be worth checking out.


Cheers,
  
  Brent Wood