Simulated WAve Visualizer (SWAV)

The Simulated WAve Visualizer SWAV program will provide mission planners a valuable tool for visualizing near shore environments that will provide real-time actionable information that will influence the implementation of missions. The SWAV is a software program that will be deployed on ships so that naval personal will be able to see first hand the environment to which they are going to be deployed. Further, SWAV will be a powerful graphical training aid to educate novice seamen on the dynamics and dangers of the littoral environment. The realistic imagery produced by SWAV conveys a multitude of information that cannot be gained through numeric or simple sea state metrics. Useful Approximations in Wave Visualization - While the field of oceanographic hydrodynamics is quite mature, the use of analytical and computational approaches developed in that area for the development of realistic ocean surfaces has been largely studied only in the movie and video game industries. A key objective of the SWAV program is to establish an analytical approach that provides physically realistic ocean scenes with a minimum of computer resources to provide a gateway to a realtime ocean visualization tool. Optical Properties of the Ocean Surface - Optical measurements of the ocean surface and sub-surface are commonplace. A key objective of the SWAV program is to connect meteorological conditions with sea surface optical properties to develop an analytical link between the instantaneous environment and the light transmission and reflection properties of the ocean surface.