US Army CECOM Helicopter Pilot Situational Awareness Display

The US Army CECOM Intelligence and Information Warfare Survivability Directorate, Ft. Monmouth, NJ demonstrated their mobile trailer Survivability Integration Laboratory at the Army Aviation Convention, 1999. This mobile trailer uses both 2D and 3D MetaVR visualization technology for helicopter pilot situational awareness display simulation based prototyping. The trailer houses the PEO STRI rotary wing aircraft simulator driving a single MetaVR VRSG out-the-window view and four MetaVR Digital Moving Map multi-function displays. The Survivability Integration Laboratory trailer was networked with the ITT display during the trade show and made possible joint simulation demonstrations.

The CECOM Night Vision Electronic Sensors group migrated the Survivability Integration Laboratory simulation software to the PEO STRI rotary wing aircraft simulator using MetaVR high performance PC-based commercial technology.

The Survivability Integration Laboratory built their multi-function display technology using MetaVR Digital Moving Map software to provide a pilot with survivability information such as intervisibility between threat vehicles and the pilot's own aircraft. As shown in the image above, the moon-shaded areas of the digital map depicted in gray are safe from a ground-based anti-aircraft vehicle threat. The MetaVR Digital Moving Map can compute intervisibility granularity at DTED level 1 resolution for the entire intervisibility region in less than 3 milliseconds per update. The high resolution of the terrain elevation data provides the pilot with a precise characterization of the terrain features for maneuvering with confidence into areas that make the aircraft inaccessible to antiaircraft fire. The MetaVR Digital Moving Map technology is an alternative to traditional slow and expensive embedded systems digital maps with low resolution terrain (such as, 800 meter elevation posts) and slow update rates that make them unsuitable for demanding survivability situational awareness displays.

The MetaVR Digital Moving Map Toolkit SDK enables developers to prototype and build 2D terrain elevation maps -- situational awareness or plan-view displays. Terrain databases for 3D visualization in VRSG can be quickly and easily generated from NGA DTED with MetaVR WorldPerfect.