VRSG as a Mission Planning and Rehearsal Tool

Mission rehearsal applications require the ability see long distances (that is, far horizon) and process large amounts of geospecific imagery draped upon terrain elevation data. MetaVR's two visual database formats, UTM-based flat-earth and round-earth Metadesic meet these and other mission rehearsal requirements.

F-16 fly-over of the virtual Nellis Air Force Base airfield, rendered in VRSG; threat domes are shown in the background. Click the image to swap the rendered image and its underlying wireframe.

The Naval Health Research Center Detachment at Brooks AFB developed a prototype mission planning and rehearsal system to address the threat of ground-based highly portable laser systems. The Laser Threat Analysis and Mission Planning System (LTAMPS) was developed to meet the mission planning side of this requirement. LTAMPS runs on a Windows platform and provides an ADRG map background for an area of interest. The user may interactively place laser threats on the terrain and identify the operational characteristics of the laser system in question. Vulnerability of an aircraft with respect to the threats is indicated on the map by a set of concentric range rings corresponding to the various levels of threat potential. Unlike conventional air defense systems, laser systems have different levels of threat potential which range between mission disruption due to glare or flash-blindness, all the way to retinal lesions resulting in permanent blindness.

LTAMPS is capable of either real-time analysis of threat potential via a mission rehearsal tool, or analyzing a playback of TACTS/TSPI data from an instrumented test range. VRSG was chosen as the mission rehearsal provider to the LTAMPS system due to its ability to rapidly generate visual databases, its high performance, and the low price PC of the platform.

The two-dimensional threat rings on the LTAMPS display are represented by VRSG as 3D wire-frame hemispheres. VRSG includes a simplistic fixed-wing aircraft dynamics model that enables a pilot to fly about the terrain in the anticipated attack approach. The LTAMPS system provides real-time feedback on the vulnerability of the aircraft to ground-based laser threats. The pilot is able to modify their attack approach in an effort to minimize intervisibility with the threat systems based on the real-time feedback provided. VRSG's realtime screen capture feature provides a means for recording key in-flight information for after action review.