satellite constellation visualization

Globalstar modelled with SaVi

I've created and run simulations of satellite constellations using SaVi, the Satellite Visualization software that was originally written at the Geometry Center. I began contributing to SaVi while studying at the Centre for Communication Systems Research. Now you can run SaVi, too, on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Irix, on Mac OS X, or on Cygwin for Microsoft Windows.

My SaVi releases include the constellation simulation scripts I've written, as well as enhanced resizeable coverage and fisheye displays.

SaVi is introduced in a SourceForge interview and a short paper. SaVi's features are described in the SaVi user manual. Satellite constellations are introduced in a tutorial using SaVi.

For real-time 3D animations, SaVi can use Geomview, also originally written at The Geometry Center. These videos, interactive java animations and renderings of constellations will quickly give you a quick idea of what Geomview can offer.

Recent SaVi development code with bugfixes is available.

The SaVi 1.4.5 release (30 April 2011) fixes coverage panel crash when satellite drops below Earth's surface (on mask elevation), streamlines coverage angle interface code to work around coverage slider use freeze in buggy Mac Tk, can build with ActiveTcl on Mac for a less buggy Tk experience, fixes redrawing fisheye if window is opened and closed without requiring resizing, adds Deligo constellation simulation, adds more packaging notes, better detects existing files when saving, includes help for example satellite, launches binary with exec so that shell script doesn't hang around, improves layout of multi-slider dialogs, identifies elliptical constellations in help, adds new coverage color swap menu option.

SaVi requires Tcl/Tk. If you are compiling SaVi, your installation of Tcl/Tk may require you to install the tcl-devel package (Red Hat, Fedora) or tcl-dev and tk-dev (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.). to get the header files to compile against. Alternatively, you can install SaVi as a binary package on Ubuntu, because a Debian/Ubuntu SaVi package is available.

SaVi is supported via the SaVi users mailing list. There's also a SaVi developers mailing list. SaVi development is stored in the SaVi SourceForge repository.

A service rendering SaVi images on request is available. Any use of SaVi images should credit SaVi (http://savi.sf.net/). There are many examples of use of SaVi where credit is given.

Lloyd Wood (lloydwood@users.sourceforge.net)
this page last updated for latest code