Visualization of field of view constraints

A computer readable medium having computer readable instructions to perform a method of visualizing field of view (FOV) constraints, comprising:

• computing effects of at least one constituent constraint upon a field of view;
• and
• visually displaying a representation of the effects of at least one constituent constraint upon the field of view,
• wherein the computing comprises:
• logically constructing a field of view comprised of a plurality of constituent constraints, each of which produces a single closed boundary contour with a constraint region either inside or outside of the closed boundary contour,
• evaluating sampled points on the contours for each of the plurality of constituent constraints to determine any arcs of contours that fall within constraint regions of other contours;
• and
• constructing a new contour defined by all arcs within the field of view,
• wherein visually displaying comprises displaying a graphical representation of the new contour, and
• wherein each constituent constraint further provides:
• a value procedure that determines if a given point is inside the constraint's region;
• an index procedure that returns a contour index for a given point, which is a real value that unambiguously encodes directions on the constraint's boundary contour;
• and
• a sampling procedure that returns an ordered array of sampled points that adequately capture an arc of the constraint's boundary contour between two specified contour indices.