3D Graphics Window

You can display all your scenario information in a dynamic 3D visualization environment. In this exercise, you will learn how to configure the 3D Graphics window and set graphics properties for a sensor on a satellite. You will need an internet connection to connect to AGI Globeserver.

Note: You will need an STK Professional Edition license to complete this tutorial.

Setting Graphics Properties for the 3D Globe

To sample some of the graphical options that are available to you:

  1. Follow the instructions in Quick Start to create a scenario that contains two facilities with sensors and one MEO satellite (or open the Quick Start scenario if you already created it).
  2. Click in the 3D Graphics window to make certain that your view is set to the default perspective.
  3. If you have a connection to the Internet, you can connect to the AGI Globeserver. The Globeserver provides additional globe files from which to choose. To connect to the Globeserver, open the property browser for the scenario and select Globeserver under 3D Graphics. Select Enable Globeserver Access and click Reload Configuration Data to gain remote access to the AGI web server that hosts globe data. Click OK to close the properties browser.
  4. Use the Globe Manager to customize scenario globes with imagery and terrain data. To access the Globe Manager, select the 3D Graphics window and click on the Globe Manager toolbar.
  5. To change the central body of the selected graphics window, click on the 3D Graphics toolbar and select a central body from the list.

    Note: If you are looking for more information about the Globe Manager follow this link.

  6. Open the 3D Graphics window Properties.
  7. On the Details properties page, you can display country and state boundaries, lines tracing the courses of rivers, and outlines setting off lakes and coastlines. Try this:
    1. Suppose that you want to see the location of the Wallops facility relative to the state border. Under Map Details, select Show, highlight RWDB2_Coastlines, RWDB2_International_Borders, and RWDB2_Provincial_Borders, and click Apply. Zoom into the Wallops facility using . You will see that Wallops is in the state of Virginia near the Maryland border.
    2. Click to set your view to the default position.
  8. The Lighting and Grids pages enable you to set visual cues for celestial objects and to make your graphics window more interesting visually.
    1. On the Lighting page, you can decide whether to illuminate the entire globe, to illuminate the globe by the Sun alone, or to illuminate the globe by the Sun together with a user-defined light source.

      To illuminate the entire globe, clear Enable Lighting and click Apply.

      To illuminate the globe by the Sun alone, select Enable Lighting and click Apply.
    2. The Grids page makes the 3D Graphics window more informative visually. For example,to display the Ecliptic (the plane in which the Earth and most planets revolve around the Sun), select Show under Ecliptic Coordinates and click Apply.
    3. Click to set your view to the default position.

Setting Graphics Properties for a Sensor

Each object in a scenario has 3D graphics properties that you can modify. In this exercise, you will modify the projection of a sensor.

  1. Add a Complex Conic sensor to the MEO satellite, and set its Outer Half Angle to 30 deg.
  2. On the 3D Graphics Attributes page for the sensor, select Translucent lines.
  3. Select the 3D Graphics Pulse page, and select Show and Smooth under Parameters. Set Amplitude to .5, set Pulse Length to 2000 km, and set Frequency Value to Slow. Click OK, and view the 3D Graphics window.
  4. Animate the scenario.
  5. Perhaps you do not want to show projections from all three sensors in the 3D Graphics window. You can enable and disable a sensor's projection in the graphics windows. In this case, the graphical settings for the 3D window are inherited from the sensor's 2D Graphics window settings, which are inherited from the scenario's 2D Graphics Global Attribute settings. To hide the graphical display of the facility's sensors, open the properties browser for each facility sensor, and on the 2D Graphics Attributes page, clear Inherit from Scenario and Show under Inheritable Settings.
  6. Reset the scenario and then animate it again. You should see only the sensor projection from the MEO satellite.