Intelligent visualization in a planning simulation

This paper describes a set of visualization techniques for interactive planning in a physical force simulation called AFS. We have developed a 3D environment in which textures are overlaid on a simulated landscape to convey information about environmental properties, agent actions, and possible strategies. Scenes are presented, via automated camera planning, such that some simple agent goals can be induced visually with little effort. These two areas of visualization functionality in AFS exploit properties of human low-level and intermediate-level vision, respectively. This paper presents AFS, its visualization environment, and studies we have run to explore the relationship between AFS visualizations and the high-level planning process.