Is OpenSceneGraph an Option for ESVS Displays?

Abstract

Modern Enhanced and Synthetic Vision Systems (ESVS) usually incorporate complex 3D displays, for example, terrain visualizations with color-coded altitude, obstacle representations that change their level of detail based on distance, semi-transparent overlyays, dynamic labels, etc. All of these elements can be conviniently implemented by using a modern scene graph implementation. OpenSceneGraph (OSG) offers such a data structure. Furthermore, OSG includes a broad support for industry-standard file formats, so that 3D data and models from other applications can be used. OSG has a large user community and is driven by open source development thus a selection of visualization techniques is available and often solutions for common problems can be found easily in the communities discussion groups. On the other side, documentation is sometimes out-dated or non-existing. We investigate which ESVS applications can be realized using OSG and on which platforms this is possible. Furthermore, we take a look at technical and license limitations.