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").

Okay, the title this week was a little weak, it was an attempt at a good pun on par with the Economist’s discussion of the S&P Downgrade: “Substandard & Poor: AAAaaargh! (www.economist.com/node/21525898)”. Sorry…

As many of you know, MAK’s vision of the future of terrain is a combination of live streaming source data coupled with high resolution insets. The idea is, you still need to obtain (or create) high fidelity terrain databases largely by hand. However, the technology to generate moderate fidelity terrain from streaming source data (imagery, elevation, and feature data) is getting better every day. So, the world you want is one where the hand generated terrain is smaller and smaller and well blended with the source data providing the rest of the world. In this world you may generate a DB for your base of operations, and a DB for the area where you will insert after a helo to fight. However, the space between the base and the extraction point will be procedurally generated to appear to be high fidelity from the perspective of the helicopter. Such blending should let you go from space to someone’s dining room table. In the three pictures below we embed the hand crafted OpenFlt DB “VR-Village” into the broader world as supplied by VR-The World (VR-TheWorld.com) (Yes, the transition is smooth and beautiful).

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.