Evolving tools, enduring principles: maintaining accuracy, transparency and trust in visual representation

Abstract

Visual simulations have long played a role in landscape and visual effects assessment. At their best, they help practitioners, communities, councils, hearing panels and courts understand the visual consequences of landscape change. At their worst, they can create a false sense of certainty, overstate realism, or obscure the assumptions that sit behind an image. The New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects’ 2010 best practice guide provided an important foundation for credible photomontage-based visual simulation practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Its core emphasis on technical accuracy, representative viewpoints, transparent method and appropriate presentation remains highly relevant. However, the technological context in which visual simulations are prepared, distributed and relied on has changed. Contemporary visual representation practice includes high-resolution elevation data, drone and terrestrial photogrammetry, point clouds, 3D GIS, real-time rendering, screen-based review, animation, augmented and virtual reality, and image production assisted by artificial intelligence. While creating opportunities to improve communication and assessment, these tools also introduce risks around apparent realism, scale, image manipulation, provenance and auditability. This paper argues that the professional challenge is no longer simply to prepare technically accurate photomontages; it extends to how to maintain trust in visual evidence across a wider, more immersive and more editable digital environment.