First Person Simulator (FPS)

To simulate interaction among human characters in a networked MetaVR™ Virtual Reality Scene Generator™ (VRSG™) session, you can use VRSG First Person Simulator™ (FPS) to to control your character and view the scene from the character’s point of view.

Real-time VRSG screen capture of a JTAC team observing an insurgent stronghold from an overwatch position on MetaVR's Afghanistan 3D terrain.

FPS creates a simulation of a dismounted infantry character within VRSG; for example it provides a way to simulate the individual for mission training set within urban terrain or mountainous villages with terrain of varying elevation and cave complexes.

Real-time screen from a VRSG scenario featuring insurgent characters lowering a box of munitions into a tunnel on MetaVR's virtual Afghanistan terrain. The mountainous terrain features a tunnel and cave network; such below-ground entrances are important for conducting realistic training for soldiers for Afghanistan and other mountainous regions.

By manipulating a gamepadyou can control your first-person portrayal and actions such as standing, walking forward or backward, kneeling, walking crouched, crawling, firing a weapon, and lying prone. In addition to controlling the character’s movements, the gamepad accesses various functions such as firing weapons, or laser ranging and target designating in JTAC/CAS mode.

	These real-time VRSG screen captures show insurgent and village characters from the MetaVR character library in various scenes. On the left is an insurgent team and on the right are villagers confronted by insurgents, all on MetaVR's Afghanistan terrain. The technical vehicle on the left is one of the new technical vehicles in MetaVR's military vehicle library.

Current FPS features include:

• Multiple firing modes for an individual weapon, with enhanced sighting devices: single-shot, semi-automatic, fully automatic, thermal, flashlight, and so on
• Complete soldier animation, which includes lying in a prone position, crawling, kneeling, standing, walking, running, and falling after being shot which match appearance bits in the DIS Entity State PDU
• Gamepad-controlled walking and running speeds
• Sound effects, such as walking, weapons fire, and battlefield background sounds
• Collision detection, for example when a soldier collides with building walls, and cannot walk through buildings
• Support for forward area controller (FAC)-type actions in JTAC Close Air Support simulations between aircraft and ground systems
• Reticle cross hairs and laser pointer toggle on the gamepad
• Third-person mode, which is similar to the “tethered-fixed” stealth mode
• User definable guns
• Advanced sound effects, such as changing clips, out-of-ammunition, and the sound of a soldier being hit
• User-configurable data tables that map markings on the front and back of a soldier to participant names
• Unstick function to climb over obstacles as high as four feet, such as fences and guard rails
• Ammunition types and number of rounds-per-clip (user-definable)
• Damage assessment for modeling features such as body armor (user-definable)
• Re-incarnation period for demonstrations and training (user-definable)

VRSG screen captures of an FPS character (JTAC operator) looking through a simulated laser designator at an insurgent stronghold on the side of a mountain on MetaVR's virtual Afghanistan terrain. The stronghold scene simulates what an operator would see when looking through a simulated laser designator with embedded 3D graphics hardware.

Support for FAC-type actions in JTAC simulations includes:

• Simulated laser designator view with user-definable magnification level
• Designating laser that issues Designator PDUs to support precision guided munitions (PGMs)
• User-definable set of selectable laser codes
• Ranging laser for target geolocating