Products & Services

MVX

Introduction

The MVX real-time 3D visualisation solution offered by VRT Systems is cost-effective, and founded on existing and proven technologies, available from and supported by established vendors. This approach is in contrast to many of the alternative solutions available today, which may be broadly characterised as one of the following:

1. An advanced technical modelling solution, previously used within an advanced research organisation (aerospace/defence/military/scientific etc.) and now being offered on a commercial basis. These usually have a high cost, often require specialised hardware to run, and specialist training to operate. 
2. A research project that couples gaming technology with a rudimentary data connector or integration scripting to gather field data to drive the model. A number of recent projects have shown how commercially available games engines can be coupled to real-time systems, usually by way of a small custom-built data connector, or a series of game script interfaces (Python, JavaScript etc.) implemented as a proof-of-concept data connection. These promise a lower-cost approach that will run on commodity hardware, but use data connectors that are often experimental, largely unproven in high-volume situations, and not supported by a commercial vendor with any significant track-record in building real-time data interfaces.
3. A dedicated real-time 3d visualisation package from a specialised real-time 3D visualisation company. These tend to fall somewhere between the two above. They do have credible data interfacing expertise and track record, but the 3D technology is usually built in-house, so can be expensive, and often requires high-end graphics hardware to run.

The solution offered by VRT Systems avoids much of the high-end cost, and provides a real-time 3D environment that is accessible on the desktop PC's of most staff, using models that can be built and maintained in-house. The solution takes an established, proven and well-regarded real-time rendering engine and development environment:

• "Unity is a multi-platform game development tool, designed from the start to ease creation. A fully integrated professional application, Unity just happens to contain the most powerful engine this side of a million dollars."

...integrated with a data interface and control library from an established automation vendor, that supports a wide range of field-proven connectors for common control and data collection systems:

• "MVX can integrate with existing control systems (CitectSCADA, MacroView, a range of DCS, and OPC) instantly adding value to systems already widely used in the Coal, Oil, Gas, Mining, Production, Transportation, Environmental and Power Industries."

Features & Benefits

• Established Real-Time Rendering Engine: The underlying technology comes from the gaming industry, in contrast to niche 3D systems from simulation, modelling, and science and research bodies. As a result, it is lower-cost than similar systems, has relatively low computing requirements (will run with commodity 3D graphics hardware as may be found on most modern laptop and desktop PCs), provides a range of delivery mechanisms such as a native desktop client (Windows and MacOS), Web browser (3D player plug-ins for Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and others) and mobile (iPhone).
• Multi-user Network Capable: The system is designed from the outset to operate over wide area networks (low bandwidth, high latency), with support for a large number of concurrent users operating in the same world model. Systems may be built to allow users to interact with one another in a collaborative environment, or to allow users to view a "personal" view of the world model.
• Role-based: Model rendering may be tailored to suit specific roles or tasks, and may be changed "on-the-fly". A variety of special rendering modes can combine transparencies, colours, lighting, textures and even physical transformations to illustrate different aspects of the same process. For example a system may be designed to provide a sequence start mode showing a cutaway process view to assist in starting complex processes (with live equipment feedback from the control system), provide an "Electrical" view of a plant that hides (using transparency) non-electrical elements of the process, offer a "Maintenance View" that hides much of the physical detail and renders equipment in terms of some maintenance metric (from the maintenance system). The range of rendering techniques is immense, and offers a great deal of control over how plants are represented.
• Reuse existing assets: The design environment can import models from almost all 3D applications, as well as a wide range of CAD drawings, images and other assets. 3D Model formats: Maya (.mb & .ma), 3D Studio Max (.max), Cheetah 3D (.jas), Cinema 4D (.c4d), Blender (.blend), Carrara, Lightwave, XSI 5.x, SketchUp Pro, Wings 3D, 3D Studio (.3ds), Wavefront (.obj), Drawing Interchange Files (.dxf), Autodesk FBX (.fbx). Images: Photoshop (.psd and .tiff), JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TGA, TIFF, PICT and many other image formats are supported. Video and Audio Formats: Ogg Theora, Ogg Vorbis, MOV, AVI, ASF, MPG, MPEG, MP4VIDEO, AIFF, WAV, MP3.
• Rapid development and maintenance cycle: The design environment brings together assets from a wide variety of sources (above) in a highly productive visual environment allowing models to be created rapidly. Links to source models are maintained, so that subsequent changes to assets in source CAD or Modelling systems update the 3D environment.
• Integrate live operational data from a range of Source systems: A single model can integrate data from a number of source systems, including SCADA/DCS, document management systems, maintenance and ERP systems. The SCADA connectors are available now and fully supported. Additional connectors for other business systems can be created on request.
• Integrate CCTV and other vision systems: Video may be integrated into the 3D environment as a native "video texture", allowing CCTV and Web Camera vision to be applied directly to static or moving object surfaces and mixed with transparent effects. The system can be used to provide tight integration of video and 3D in a mixed "Augmented Reality" system where (for example) 3D model elements showing feedback of plant status from SCADA/DCS systems can be overlaid onto live video.
• Flexibility in camera/view-port control: As well as a free first-person viewing mode (unconstrained walk-through and fly-through modes) the system supports the creation of pre-determined camera viewpoints (set views accessed via "short-cuts"), pre-programmed camera paths (trace a path from start point to a point of interest, or fly a continuous loop) and programmatically controlled view-ports (have the application continuously re-evaluating and controlling the view-port to frame particular areas of interest, based on data from SCADA/DCS, maintenance, and other systems).
• Real-time or replay: The system can operate in current "real-time" mode, or operate from historical data sources to provide a replay function. This allows the system to capture and replay past shifts, and compare to previous best practice.
• Integrate GPS and positioning systems: The 3D environment is a natural fit for spatially-oriented applications such as collision detection and avoidance, and the tracking of equipment, people and product.
• Unifying environment for other 3D model based functions: 3D models are increasingly being used in plant feasibility/design, training, and other activities. By integrating real-time and transactional data from operations systems, this environment has the potential to unify a range of existing activities around a common 3D plant model. By leveraging the same plant model for multiple activities, the cost of maintaining the plant model can be justified and spread across a range of business functions:
  > Operations monitoring/control - augment process information from traditional SCADA and DCS systems with advanced tools to support operators controlling the plant.
  > Training - undertake training scenarios and run induction walk-throughs on the common plant model (always up-to-date).
  > Condition monitoring, maintenance - integrate data from maintenance, documentation and ERP systems to provide advanced tools for plant maintenance staff to plan work activities. Any changes to the plant are captured as part of this process, to ensure the common plant model is kept up-to-date.
  > Incident management - provide advanced decision-support tools linking video, audio and emergency response procedures with feedback of current equipment status.
  > Document management - link documentation for operation, maintenance and safety to actual equipment in the 3D world, to allow staff to locate material on the basis of an equipment's location. Staff that are unfamiliar with equipment asset ID systems, document systems, drawing registers etc. can locate a piece of equipment in the 3D world as easily as walking up to it, and then link back into all the design documentation, maintenance procedures, operating procedures and material safety information.

Solution Architecture

Deployment

The system supports a range of deployment options and client platforms -

• Standalone Mac & Windows: Publish standalone builds for Mac OS X (Universal Binary, or specific, smaller Intel/PPC-only builds) and Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7.
• Support for Old Hardware and Drivers: Potential users may be using outdated graphics hardware and drivers. Even many common computer configurations are much less than ideal for 3D rendering. The 3D engine has rock-solid support for almost all hardware/software combinations, in both DirectX and OpenGL.
• Web Deployment: 3D worlds can be played inside a web browser thanks to the Unity Web Player Plug-in. The plug-in download is small (about 3 MB), auto-installs without a browser restart, and already has an 8-digit distribution worldwide (proven on a wide variety of hardware and software combinations). It works on all modern browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and most Mozilla-based browsers. A web-based 3D environment can be published that is identical to a standalone in visual fidelity from the same project. See it in action »

Data Integration

In-game real-time data connector communicates via TCP/IP to a data server:

• CitectSCADA - native CTAPI implementation.
• MacroView - a supervisory data collection system with native device support for a number of PLC and DCS systems - enquire for full details.
• OPC - an OPC gateway interface (OPC Metabridge) that supports connection to a wide range of OPC compliant devices (OPC-DA v2.0).

Further, the system supports a plug-in architecture to allow for other data and multimedia source connectors:

• In addition to the built-in video streaming, VRT can provide connectors for integration with other video streaming formats and CCTV systems.
• Data connectors can be created for any external systems, such as ERP, maintenance systems, document management systems, or any other enterprise data sources.

Model Design

The design environment is available on a Windows platform and uses the Unity Pro software, combined with the MVX add-in library of components. Unity Pro is a visual design environment that integrates with a wide range of content creation systems such as 3D modelling applications, CAD systems, illustration packages, audio and video formats.

A 3D model "scene" is created for the plant, equipment or process being modelled. Data connectors are added to allow integration with real-time and other Enterprise systems. A single scene can combine data from multiple SCADA, DCS and Enterprise systems of different types. The 3D scene is animated by adding "behaviour" components (like spin, colour change etc.) which are driven by expressions and tag values. More advanced scripts can be written in JavaScript or C#. The design environment has similarities with some graphics builders for SCADA HMI systems, in that an object has behaviour scripts that define how the object is rendered (colour, transparency etc.) or behaves (movement etc.) on the basis of external data supplied by the connectors. The scripts are evaluated on a cyclic basis to drive the dynamics of the display.

Because the 3D environment offers a much richer feature-set than traditional 2D visualisation environments, it can take a little experience with the technology to start to unlock the full potential of the system. For this reason we recommend starting any system on a teaming basis, whereby VRT provide assistance in building the initial model. This is not so much a reflection on the difficulty in using the system, as we do offer a full development environment and training packages for those customers that wish to take model design and maintenance completely in-house.

Model Maintenance

For customers that wish to take on in-house maintenance of models, the unity design environment maintains object linking with CAD/3D source models, so updates to plant and equipment models can be automatically reflected in the 3D environment.

To assist in managing change processes, Unity has an optional Asset Server which provides a dedicated digital asset management and revision control system, or, if your organisation already has a source/revision control system, Unity Pro can integrate with it.