Edge Development Option

Edge Development Option (EDO) is a toolkit based on EDGE, a software program developed by a company named Autometric, now part of Boeing. While EDGE was initially mainly developed for SGI machines, EDO is mainly a Windows based application. EDO retained many of EDGE functionality but allowed greater flexibility for developers, i.e. the ability to integrate EDO functionality into their own application leveraging on EDO's libraries. Google Earth is the more famous heir to the 3D applications EDGE and EDO.

However, unlike Google Earth, EDO and EDGE were not just 3D or 2D visualisation applications, but they allowed for analysis, e.g. line of sight analysis, and therefore were also used for military applications. EDO provides a continuous display of surveillance and reconnaissance sensors’ positions and fields-of-view, including terrain constraints. The open interface can also deliver real-time data surveillance and reconnaissance feeds using data displayed in a 3-D visualization environment. With precision sensor analysis, satellites and air and ground-based platforms, essential intelligence can be collected in real time. For these reasons, a licensed copy of EDO was also installed in the White House.