Have you ever wondered how forensic investigators do their job? Just the other day I was wondering how much simulation has made its way into those types of industries. Do auto incident investigators need to do full kinematic calculations by hand? How about blood spatter? That’s just fluids, right? Surely there is some sort of app for that by now …
And as if to answer my question, my RSS feed notified me of the release of FARO Zone 3D 2018. According to FARO’s website, FARO Zone 3D 2018 is the “first VR-enabled software solution for law enforcement and forensics professionals that provides a comprehensive platform for documenting, analysing, and reconstructing scenes that includes powerful forensic analysis, 3D diagramming and animation tools.”
Virtual reality (VR) incident reconstruction analysis. OK, now you have my attention.
FARO Zone 3D 2018 is aimed at public safety professionals. It allows users to take real-life measurements from the scene of an incident and virtually reconstruct the scene for further analysis in both 2D and 3D. The resulting recreations can be used for what-if scenarios, to confirm theories and make captivating presentation videos for the courtroom.
Now that the software has VR capabilities, users are free to walkthrough scenes as if they were a virtual witness and experience the incident from different perspectives.
FARO Zone 3D 2018 is the next evolutionary stage of previous FARO incident simulation packages such as Crime Zone, Crash Zone and Reality. It contains tools for different specialized scenarios, including the Bullet Trajectory Tool and Blood Spatter Analysis Smart Tool, as well as a suite of tools dedicated to vehicle crash analysis. The software can generate reports on many key crash parameters including 360-degree momentum, skid, critical speed, profile and damage analysis data. And, naturally, the software contains access to the Standard Vehicle Specifications Database so exact measurements for most vehicles are not difficult to obtain.
You can see how FARO Zone 3D’s skid analysis works in the video below.
Of course, being a FARO product, you would expect there to be a heavy focus on ensuring that there is compatibility between the physical measurement instruments and software itself. Indeed, FARO Zone 3D 2018 can import point cloud data from FARO Scene and other formats.
Users also can import maps from Google and Bing, and add terrain markers to define 3D maps for use in scenarios. These map scenes can be merged with point cloud data to generate the most graphically, and dimensionally, realistic simulations for use with analyses.
FARO Zone 3D 2018 is available to buy right now. Or if (like me) you just have a morbid curiosity how these kinds of things work, you can download a free trial of of FARO Zone 3D Advanced.