MetaVR Technology Used in Littoral and Underwater Simulations

The latest release of MetaVR Virtual Scene Generator™ (VRSG™) contains features that support simulation in the geographic shore line region (littoral) to include the sea floor, water and coast line. Version 5 features include wave animation, sky model reflection, realistic underwater visibility, and sea-floor terrain compiled with bathymetric data.

In the field, VRSG is currently being used by the Navy in submarine and undersea warfare systems. Initial proof-of-concept work modeled the Narragansett Bay and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) test range to provide a visualization solution for live platform and sensor monitoring in the test range, and to offer a virtual environment for modeling and simulation applications.

			Upcoming plans include use of MetaVR VRSG within the Navy’s undersea modeling and simulation framework in a variety of Distributed Network System scenarios. The visualization component provides greater insight into the scenarios and could include a variety of future platform concepts such as acoustic sensors, unmanned vehicles, and weapons.
	One goal of the scenarios is to investigate the impact of unmanned systems on human performance in dynamic operational environments which present challenges and risks to both the human operator and unmanned systems. The Navy is developing tools for scenario-driven, adaptive interfaces that will facilitate the development of optimal utilization and management of unmanned systems.
			Distributed networks of autonomous, unmanned systems are designed to increase data collection capacity and enhance situational awareness to the decision maker. The complexity of unmanned systems, however, presents challenges to the decision maker. Visual simulation can help address these problems in the early stage of system design and in training; ultimately it can help to optimize mission performance in the battlespace.

 
 
VRSG screen captures from a MetaVR scenario using sea entities, characters and an oil platform from MetaVR's 3D content libraries. Click an image to view a high-resolution version of the image.