Visualizing the Physical Environment¶
Goals¶
The physical environment has a profound effect on the communication of wireless devices. For example, physical objects like walls inside buildings constraint mobility. They also obstruct radio signals often resulting in packet loss. It’s difficult to make sense of the simulation without actually seeing where physical objects are.
The visualization of physical objects present in the physical environment is essential. This showcase contains two example simulations, which demonstrate the visualization of physical objects.
4.0About the visualizer¶
The PhysicalEnvironmentVisualizer (also part of IntegratedVisualizer) is responsible for displaying the physical objects. The objects themselves are provided by the PhysicalEnvironment module; their geometry, physical and visual properties are defined in the XML configuration of the PhysicalEnvironment module.
The two-dimensional projection of physical objects is determined by the SceneCanvasVisualizer module. (This is because the projection is also needed by other visualizers, for example MobilityVisualizer.) The default view is top view (z axis), but you can also configure side view (x and y axes), or isometric or ortographic projection.
The default view¶
This example configuration (DefaultView in the ini file)
demonstrates the default visualization of objects. The objects are
defined in the indoor.xml file, which depicts an apartment with
three rooms. The network contains just two modules, a
PhysicalEnvironment and an IntegratedVisualizer module. When the
simulation is run, the network looks like this:
The isometric view¶
In this example configuration (IsometricView in the ini file), the
view is set to isometric projection. This is done by setting the
viewAngle parameter in SceneVisualizer:
*.visualizer.canvasVisualizer.sceneVisualizer.viewAngle = "isometric"
When the simulation is run, the network looks like the following.
3D visualization¶
The visualizer also supports OpenGL-based 3D rendering using the OpenSceneGraph (OSG) library. If your OMNeT++ installation has been compiled with OSG support, you can switch to 3D view using the toolbar. The result will look like the following. Note that the SceneVisualizer view settings have no effect on the 3D view, you can use the mouse to move the camera and change the view angle.
Sources: omnetpp.ini, PhysicalEnvironmentVisualizationShowcase.ned
Further information¶
For more information, refer to the NED documentation of PhysicalEnvironmentVisualizer and SceneCanvasVisualizer.