Due to concern that current U.S. Air Force depth perception standards and test procedures may not be adequate for accurately identifying aircrew medically fit to perform critical depth perception tasks during flight, the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine developed a stereoscopic simulation environment to investigate depth perception vision standards. The initial results of this research showed that while the use of stereoscopic displays clearly improved performance for a helicopter landing task involving depth judgments, an individual's stereo acuity was not predictive of performance. However, landing task performance could be predicted when stereo acuity was used together with binocular fusion range. However, motion perception was a better predictor of performance than stereo acuity. Potential implications for medical vision standards and the potential complexities involved in predicting real-world performance based on performance in a stereoscopic flight simulation are discussed.
Urban data is being collected in increasing quantities as smart cities around the globe seek to understand and improve their operations and plan their growth. This trend is set to continue as UNICEF predicts that 75% of people will live in cities by the end of the 21st century. One of the aims of Smart City initiatives is to improve inclusivity by communicating more about the city to citizens and organizational stakeholders. The large amounts of data and computational cost of the calculations required to do this mean that cloud-based analytics and visualization is an attractive option as it can deliver results to virtually any client device. In this article, we describe the design and implementation of the Urban Insight Cloud Engine (UICE) a pilot cloud-based 3D visualization system for Smart Cities that has been created using open software and data sets. This delivers a continuous live view of data collected by Urban Observatory sensors in the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. We precede this with a discussion of our experience designing the facilities that exist, are being built, or are being planned to be built, to support our visualization research and production at Newcastle University.