GeoZui3D is an experimental system for visualizing geospatial oceanographic data. This paper describes new capabilities of the system to support zooming in both space and time. As a result of recent enhancements, GeoZui3D now allows for the interactive visualization over a wide range of time scales from millennia scale geological events, through millisecond scale events. The system supports many time-varying data types including surfaces, flow fields, tidal surfaces, vessel and animal trajectories. Time-referenced audio can be incorporated. An especially useful enhancement is our invention of space-time notes. These allow for the user to save a particular place, time, viewpoint, and rate of playback. To this the user can add text describing the event. Clicking on a space-time note causes to view to be automatically navigated to the stored space and time. Applications of this system include AUV and ROV data playback as well as the visualization of estuarine flow models.
Our greatest success to date has been to provide support to whale ethologists. They have used GeoZui3D to support interpretation of whale underwater foraging behavior with data obtained from tagged whales. The time-enhanced version of GeoZui3D allows researchers to load the following data and play it back at varying rates: bathymetry; a time series of AIS position information for ships in the vicinity; the series of positions of two RHIB fast boats used to keep in contact with the whale pods; the positions of two tagged whales; sound streams associated with one of the two whales. Whale researchers have used GeoZui3D to analyze this data in a way that has not previously been possible. The system's unique ability to attach the viewpoint, with a single click, to a moving object was found to be especially useful. This enables a researcher to zoom out, obtain an overview of the ship traffic in a particular area, then to zoom back in, find where the whale was, and attach the viewpoint to it so as to observe its behavior for a while. Space time notes are used to record interesting behavior events so that they can be easily found at a later date. These have proven extremely useful both as an analysis too and a presentation tool.
