First Person Simulator (FPS)

When you have human characters networked in a VRSG session, you can use VRSG First Person Simulator™ (FPS) to control your characters to view the scene or exercise from their point of view.

The image above shows an infantry character in an urban training exercise at Ft. Campbell.

FPS creates a simulation of a dismounted infantry character within VRSG. FPS provides a way to simulate the individual for training for military operations on urban terrain (MOUT) exercises.

This image shows 0.15 meter resolution imagery and survey elevation data points, used in WorldPerfect to build a realistic simulated MOUT site for use in conjunction with FPS.

You operate FPS by manipulating a standard joystick that controls a 3D display generated by a desktop computer, which in turn controls your first-person portrayal and actions such as standing, walking forward or backward, kneeling, walking crouched, crawling, firing a weapon, and lying prone.

These realtime VRSG screen captures show infantry characters from the MetaVR character library in various positions.They also illustrate how the presence of fog conditions and geotypical trees and grass that match the imagery improve the realism of the MOUT site used for the FPS simulation exercise.

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
• Joystick-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 Close Air Support (CAS) simulations between aircraft and ground systems
• Reticle cross hairs and laser pointer toggle on the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick
• 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 looking through a simulated laser designator at a street scene on MetaVR's virtual Baghdad database, and the street scene in FPS CAS mode simulating what an operator would see when looking through a simulated laser designator with embedded 3D graphics hardware.

Support for FAC-type actions in CAS 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