A multiple object tracking system has a system controller with a placement block placing target objects and distractor objects within a 3D display space upon a representation of a solid ground, an assignment block assigning respective trajectories for movement of each of the objects, and an animation block defining an animated sequence of images showing the ground and the objects following the respective trajectories. A visual display presents images to a user including the animated sequence of images and a ground representation. A manual input device is adapted to respond to manual input from the user to select objects believed to be the target objects after presentation of the animated sequence. Preferably, the animation block incorporates a plurality of 3D cues applied to each of the objects, such as 3D perspective, parallax, 3D illumination, binocular disparity, and differing occlusion.