Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) is scheduled to demonstrate the Navy's first enterprise-wide, three-dimensional scene visualization tool (SPIDERS 3D) for Navy and Marine Corps installations at the Navy League's Sea-Air-Space Exposition, May 16-18.

"NAVFAC is meeting the Secretary of the Navy's challenge to drive innovation into Navy business practices and improve ways to connect people, ideas and information on an enterprise-wide level," said Alex Viana, SPIDERS 3D project lead. "We partnered with the Navy Installations Command to deliver interactive, geospatially accurate, virtual 3-D naval installation environments to improve advance planning and identify risks for introducing new ships, subs and aircraft into the shore environment."

Navy planners and engineers use the SPIDERS 3D tool to support major defense acquisition programs by visualizing platform-to-shore interface design concepts and by identifying potential incompatibilities and risks early in the design process. Consequently, this enables earlier consideration of program alternatives for installations worldwide.

One critical aspect of SPIDERS 3D is it allows multiple users across the Navy enterprise to conduct real-time 3-D collaboration over the web on their desktop. The program currently contains more than 100 virtual 3-D Navy and Marine Corps installations and 300 different 3-D models of weapon platforms, shore support equipment, shore infrastructure and base facilities.

The web-based Extensible 3D (X3D) technology implemented in SPIDERS 3D provides a framework to increase 3-D data interoperability. X3D is a royalty-free, open-standard file format and run-time architecture to represent and communicate 3-D scenes and objects using extensible markup language. It also enables repurposing of other 3-D data and is complementary with emerging digital thread technologies, such as 3-D scanning and 3-D printing.

NAVFAC is delivering these virtual 3-D environments to Navy systems commands, program executive offices and fleet and shore enterprise stakeholders to improve the pace of technical, geospatial-based collaboration and decision support in many different areas--including systems engineering, shore planning, product design, security planning, environmental and cultural resources management.

Demonstrations will be held in the Naval Energy and Innovations booth (No. 1347).

For more news from Naval Facilities Engineering Command, visit www.navy.mil/.