In VR-Vantage 1.5, we will be making some small changes to the Track History feature. Track Histories are currently limited in how long they can get. This is for performance reasons because, as you can imagine, creating infinitely long track histories will cause the application to run out of memory.

In 1.5, we will allow the users to specify the length of each track history segment and also the total number of segments allowed per track history. This lets you have longer track histories if you have fewer entities, for example. 

VT MÄK is pleased to announce the release of VR-Vantage 1.4.1. This release marks another milestone in our Open Streaming Terrain story by adding the visualization of streaming vector data.  VR-Vantage applications (like VR-Vantage Stealth or VR-Vantage IG) can now stream in point, linear and areal features from a compliant terrain server using the open standard Web Feature Service (WFS) protocol, and use those features to generate textured 3D geometry on-the-fly at run-time.  VR-Vantage applications can:

• Generate 3D geometry for buildings, fences, and walls by extruding polygons from geo-specific footprints (linear or areal features), and applying geotypical textures based on feature attributes
• Place pre-built 3D models representing trees, geospecific buildings, lampposts, etc., into the scene based on the locations and attributes of individual point features (“point feature substitution”)
• Automatically populate forests with trees, or populate roads with telephone poles, fire hydrants, etc., by randomly placing 3D objects within areal features, or along linear features.

Combined with our existing support for streaming elevation and imagery, these new capabilities allow you to very quickly visualize 3D environments that are both global in scale, and visually rich:  Just upload your source data to a compliant streaming terrain server such as MAK’s VR-TheWorld Server, configure your feature-to-geometry mappings using an XML-based “.earth file”, and tell VR-Vantage to connect.

With the release of VR-Vantage 1.4.1 comes the ability to visualize streaming features from Open Streaming Terrain Servers like VR-TheWorld. Check out the hundreds of thousands of buildings and millions of trees being served up on our Hawaii database. The island of Oahu has been chosen to demonstrate this capability and all you need to visualize it is a VR-Vantage application and an internet connection. 

Use any VR-Vantage application like VR-Vantage Stealth or VR-Vantage FreeView. Connect to our online VR-TheWorld Server (when the app starts a terrain chooser dialog appears with "VR-TheWorld Online - MÄK Earth.earth" already selected. Just click OK). Load a "saved view" to bring you directly to Hawaii (Observer Saved Viewe Panel -> Import and Replace Views -> Choose "hawaii-boston.osrx". Click on "Hawaii").

The next major release of VR-Vantage (1.5 coming out Q3 2012) will let users visualize radio communications. Users of VR-Vantage Stealth, VR-Vantage PVD and VR-Vantage XR (and eventually VR-Forces and SimMetrics) can tell who's sending radio messages by their "Squawks". You'll also be able to see who they're communicating with via "Radio Communication Lines". 

I talk to a lot of customers and I keep hearing the same thing when it comes to the VR-Vantage Developer's Toolkit... needs more documentation! Sure, people are always asking for stuff (and please continue to do so!) but even if we have an awesome API, it's no good if people can't figure out how to use it.

Along with providing new capabilities like Simulated Video and Effects Based Sensors, we plan to do a lot of work on our class documentation and examples during the 1.5 development effort. We also will be adding a bunch of tutorials that will walk developers through a series of examples that demonstrate the various layers of the VR-Vantage architecture or go in depth into a specific area.

Having released VR-Vantage 1.4 it's time to move on to the next version. We showed several technology demonstations at IITSEC this year and we are in the process of productizing them for VR-Vanatage 1.5. 

Effects based sensors let users visualize NVG, FLIR and other sensor views without materially classifying data. While these sensor visualizations are not physically accurate, they are pretty good and since they don't require any changes to models or databases they are super easy to use. They still utilize JRM's world class technology for sensor visualization, just without the high fidelity physics based stuff (which can be enabled via a drop-in add-on module).

VR-Vantage 1.4 is here - bringing with it support for a new compiler MSVC++ 10 64 bit! This meant upgrading OpenSceneGraph (to version 3.0.1) and many other dependencies (Silverlining and DI-Guy for starters). Additionally a few smaller capabilities were added:

We now support HLA Evolved, allowing VR-Vantage applications to play in exercises with modular FOMs. We also added more examples and better documentation for the developer's toolkit (a trend you will see continue over the next several releases). There are also a few customer requests in here too: an object count panel, a space attach mode for attaching to satellites, an option for linear model scaling, and a way to use images for 2D symbols instead of fonts.

It's only day one of I/ITSEC and I can't believe how popular VR-TheWorld and our streaming terrain capability has become!

Last year we introduced the VR-theWorld Server and it made a small ripple. Today, however, we have been demonstrating our Hawaii database featuring streaming terrain, streaming elevation, and streaming features with 150,000 buildings, a cut-in and high detailed airport site, over 9000 trees, and a small town using point feature replacement--so far, it is a huge success.  

We will also be upgrading many of our 3rd party dependencies to provide our customers with the latest improvements. We will move to OSG 3.0.1, Qt 4.7, DI-Guy 11 just to name a few specifics. We will also be upgrading to a newer version of GL Studio and VR-Link.

This release is intended just to support a new compiler and will not have any new features in it. The benefit is that it will be a very quick turnaround time and we expect this to be out the door sometime around the middle of September.