Ask HN: System visualization tools?

Certain industries put together beautiful visualizations of how their systems operate. Chemical plants provide a visualization of their pipes, pumps, tanks, and other equipment that engineers can monitor and manipulate in real time.

Why don't we use this type of visualization more in the software industry? We love graphs, but tend to stop there.

What tools and techniques do you use to display and manipulate your systems? Netflix Hystrix [1] is an example of a useful interactive dashboard, but I've rarely seen others. What else is out there?

If you were going to build one from scratch (either in the browser or as a native client), what technology would you use?

[1] http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/12/making-netflix-api-more-resilient.html