By Brett Wiesner - Recently I gave a presentation at IMAGE 2011 in Scottsdale, Arizona and at an NDIA meeting in Fairfax, Virginia on the benefits of Open Streaming Terrain (OST). I thought I’d share just a brief synopsis of that here.

Terrain databases are an important part of any simulation and there are four main approaches for building terrain databases. You have hand modeled terrains that are built by artists and 3D modelers. There are tool generated terrain databases that are built by terrain generation tools. You have direct from source terrains that are constructed on the fly from source data in the client application. And finally you have streaming terrain, where content is streamed from a sever to a client directly. Each of these terrain approaches has its advantages and drawbacks.

By Brett Wiesner - We know we needed to get a linux build of VR-Vantage out to customers ASAP but we felt like sneaking in a few more features along the way was a good idea. We will release VR-Vantage 1.3.1 around the end of July with support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and also some great new capabilities like zoom and terrain scaling.

With zoom, you can magnify the view and see things that are far away without changing the observers location. This is useful for UAV sensor applications, ground based binocular views or even periscopes!

When VR-Forces starts up, it needs to connect to a DIS or HLA exercise. To do that, you need to specify at least a minimum set of configuration parameters. The VR-Forces Launcher provides a graphical user interface for specifying these parameters. It is ideal if you want to run in combined mode (one front-end and one back-end that start together) or in independent mode (front-ends and  back-end are started separately) with just one front-end and back-end.

As the newly accepted Secretary for the National Training Systems Association (NTSA) Executive Committee, I wanted to let people know what great work the committee does in the training and simulation community. The following three examples demonstrate how the NTSA Executive Committee provides leadership, volunteers, and support:

The default behavior of the VR-Forces startup process is designed to get you up and running quickly. However you can customize the process to meet your workflow, as follows:

VT MÄK is pleased to announce the release of VR-Vantage 1.3, which includes the new VR-Vantage PVD and our terrain and model viewer, VR-Vantage FreeView.

The new VR-Vantage PVD, which is based on the VR-Vantage architecture, provides a 2D interactive tactical map display of a virtual environment.

Greetings, I'd like to let everyone know that VR-Vantage 1.3 has been in testing for the last month or so. New versions of VR-Vantage IG, our desktop image generator, VR-Vantage Stealth, our battlefield visualization tool, and VR-Vantage XR, our exaggerated reality common operating picture tool will be ready at the end of April.

It has been some time since the MAK PVD has been updated but I'm pleased to announce that the next generation Plan View Display will be available soon. Introducing VR-Vantage PVD! This real-time interactive tactical map application will increase your situational awareness of the virtual battlefield.

VR-Forces 4.0 is getting close to release!  As many of you are aware, we’ve been working hard over the past year to give VR-Forces a whole new GUI based on MAK’s VR-Vantage visual product.  One of the key new capabilities of this GUI is the ability to work with many different views of the scenario at the same time.