Virtual Role Player Stations  

System Context

A Virtual Player Station is the place where a human player steps into the virtual world to control a character, vehicle, sensor, or weapon system. Whether you’re sitting in a virtual cockpit flying a flight simulator, driving a desktop tank or HMMMV simulator with a joystick, or navigating a human character through a building with a mouse-and-keyboard-based game interface, you’re a player in the game.

Trends

Distributed, virtual simulation environments are built to achieve a variety of goals – training, mission rehearsal, experimentation, concept demonstration, analysis and more. But regardless of the objective, nearly all of these systems incorporate some kind of virtual player station. In virtual training systems, the trainees themselves typically operate virtual player stations, but instructors or white cell role players might also control individual simulated entities using similar applications.

In a Battle Lab environment, simulation engineers or domain experts might evaluate a proposed change to a vehicle system or battlefield doctrine by play-testing it in the virtual world. And in an operational environment, a soldier might familiarize himself with the terrain or mission ahead by driving through an accurately modeled 3D representation of a town or by performing a simulated UAS flyover.

Each virtual player station is tailored to the role, user interface, fidelity, and display system that are appropriate for the task at hand. But a wide variety of applications share a common, core set of requirements and capabilities:

  • Real-time 3D image generation, with 1st person “out-the-window” and 3rd person views
  • Vehicle or avatar navigation and control
  • Terrain database import and interaction
  • Human-machine interfaces (dashboards, heads-up-displays, instrumentation, etc.)
  • Interoperability with other Player Stations, SAFs, and constructive simulations
  • Weather and environment modeling
  • Physics (vehicle dynamics and collision with the 3D geometry)
  • Sensor modeling and visualization
  • Weapons modeling, including fly-out

MÄK Virtual Player Stations

The MÄK Virtual Player Stations tailor technologies from MÄK and our partners to meet your requirements:

  • Visualization. The visualization system provides high-performance visuals for out-the-window visuals and simulated UAS video feeds. It comes pre-configured with a broad set of high-resolution vehicle models from Simthetiq and other vendors, has built-in support for human character animation through Boston Dynamic’s DI-Guy, and dynamic vegetation using IDV’s SpeedTree. Core technology: VR-Vantage IG
  • Network Interoperability. Our Player Stations are natively compliant with both the DIS protocol and with several versions of the High Level Architecture (HLA), including IEEE 1516 and HLA Evolved. The entity that you control is automatically published onto the network and remote entities will appear in your view so that you can interact with other DIS- or HLA-compliant Player Stations and with CGF entities. Core technology: VR-Link
  • Vehicle Modeling. Vehicle dynamics and physics can be provided at various levels of fidelity depending on your requirements and budget. We have delivered player stations that incorporate the same basic parameterized dynamics models that we use in our VR-Forces CGF. But we have also built customized systems based on RTDyanmics’ RotorLib and FixedWingLib aircraft models and on CM Lab’s Vortex models, which provide engineering-grade vehicle physics so that you can see individual wheels bouncing over bumps in the terrain as you drive.
  • Terrain Agility. Like all MÄK products, our Virtual Player Stations are Terrain Agile so that we can achieve true terrain correlation with many different simulation and visualization systems in your environment. Our player stations can import terrain using a variety of approaches, techniques, and formats. We can read visual databases in OpenFlight and MetaFlight format, import elevation, imagery, and vector data directly from source, or even stream terrain from remote servers such as MÄK’s VR-TheWorld Server through web-services standards. Core technology: VR-Vantage IG, VR-inTerra, VR-TheWorld
  • Cockpit Displays. Your VPS can include head-up displays, virtual cockpits, and simulated analytic devices. We can create and incorporate custom 2D and 3D HMI elements depending on your needs. Core technology: GL-Studio 
  • Sensor Displays. The visualization component can include infrared, night-vision, and other sensor displays. Core technology: SensorFX – a physics-based sensor visualization plug-in to MÄK’s VR-Vantage, based on JRM Technologies’ SigSim and SenSim products.

Let MÄK build a custom, cost-effective Virtual Player Station for you based on our proven platform, process, and technology.