Help spread the word about modeling and simulation!

By Tom Stanzione - As VP for Technical Outreach at MÄK, part of my job is to coordinate with universities that participate in our Research with MÄK and Teaching with MÄK programs. Last month, I visited George Mason University in Fairfax, VA to meet with the Center of Excellence in Command, Control, Communications, Computing and Intelligence (C4I). The Center is currently working with Brazil’s Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA) in San José dos Campos on a very interesting project.  Dr. Mike Hieb and his colleague Henrique Marques are using our VR-Forces constructive simulation to develop a testbed for future command and control research. They are currently using the testbed to develop an advanced planning algorithm for emergency response asset management and route planning. If you are a university professor or researcher and are interested in finding out more about our programs with education institutions, please contact me at tstanzione@mak.com or 1.617.876.8085 x109.

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.

We are having a contest and giving away cash prizes (as well as a permanent VR-Vantage developers license) the most innovative demo's people create using VR-Vantage. Have you built something cool using VR-Vantage? Or maybe even a great scenario using VR-Forces that looks great when viewed with VR-Vantage applications like VR-Vantage XR?