MetaVR Virtual Reality Scene Generator (VRSG) as a Standalone DIS/HLA Viewer

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Virtual Reality Scene Generator (VRSG)


		Overview


			Real-time Media Clips of Demo Scenarios


		Computer Image Generator (IG)


			Standalone Networked Viewer


		What's in Version 5


			Tour the User Interface


		Interoperability with SAF


			Character Animation


		First Person Simulator


			Scenario Creation


		Radar Simulation


			IRserver


		VR Tracker Support


			Sound Support


		3D Content


			Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Entities


		Brigade Combat Team (BCT) Entities


			Technical Entities


		Multi-Channel IG


			OpenFlight Conversion Tools


		System Requirements


			User's Guide

Terrain Tools

North America 3D Metadesic Terrain

Asia 3D Metadesic Terrain

Summary of MetaVR's Available 3D Terrain

3D Terrain Creation

3D Layering Control Plugin for ArcMap

Complete Systems

3D Accelerators

Storage Devices

Navigational Controllers

Evaluation Policy

VRSG as a Standalone DIS/HLA Viewer

As a standalone Windows-based DIS/HLA viewer, MetaVR™ Virtual Reality Scene Generator™ (VRSG™) core features include:

Terrain paging algorithms to visualize geographically expansive terrain limited only by the storage capacity of the user's system.
Synchronized multiple viewpoints so the user can depict a contiguous virtual world across a set of multiple display systems.
Culling and continuous morphing levels of detail techniques to provide a realistic virtual world without anomalous visual artifacts.
Support for 6 DOF game controller devices and for gamepads/joysticks that comply with the Human Interface Device (HID) standard.
Choice of coordinate systems and database projections.
Basic sensor-view features:
white and black hot modes, Day TV, and simulated noise. Additional physics-based IR support through the MetaVR IRserver.
Ability to save and recall named viewpoints.
Editable 3D sounds associated with virtual world events and vehicle types.
Dynamic environmental effects such as haze, ground fog, volumetric clouds, night sky.
Massive libraries of texture-mapped 3D content (characters, vehicles, culture).

3D animated characters; VRSG support hundreds of characters within the field of view while still maintaining a high frame rate.
User-extendable special effects including fire, missile trails, scene-illuminating flares, particle-based smoke explosions, rotor wash, and dust trails that respond to wind.
Multiple degree-of-freedom hardware tracker support for controlling the position and/or orientation of the VRSG viewpoint.
Absolute terrain correlation with the SAF CTDB and OTF formats. Also, ability to use VRSG to visually inspect SAF databases for terrain anomalies.
Conversion tools for converting OpenFlight models and terrain to MetaVR's model and flat-earth terrain formats.
A virtual world camera that can capture still images and save them to the Windows Clipboard or to a file for use in other applications such as Microsoft Office.
Support for UDP multicast, broadcast, or point-to-point communication.
Teleportation to arbitrary locations.
An extensive set of attachment modes.
Ability to modify and save configuration settings of a simulation for reuse in subsequent sessions.
Real-time digital video stream recording from frame buffer to MPEG.

Navigation

You navigate through the virtual world by using the VRSG user interface, and a game controller such as the 3Dconnexion SpacePilot or SpaceExplorer.

3D API

By using the Microsoft Direct3D API, a subcomponent of the Microsoft DirectX interactive media technologies, VRSG provides significant capabilities for multiplayer interaction on commercially available graphics cards and personal computers. VRSG is also interoperable with other DirectX components, such as DirectSound, and DirectSound 3D.

Network capabilities

Using the DIS protocol or the High Level Architecture plugin, VRSG can visualize up to several thousand entities simultaneously on a high-fidelity terrain database.

VRSG has no explicit limit on many entities it can it handle in a scene while maintaining real-time performance. MetaVR has customers run exercises with upwards of 100,000
entities while maintaining real-time performance. The only limitations might be performance considerations such as the bandwidth of the communications channel, model complexity, database complexity, viewing range, and how near the entities are in your field of view.

VRSG is fully interoperable with Semi-Automated Forces (SAF) and other DIS-compliant applications.

Aerial view of MetaVR's Afghanistan database.

SAF CTDB terrain of the same area in Afghanistan.

The following diagram shows a network simulation where entity generation occurs on one computer and the visualization takes place on another computer:

Network simulation diagram

Interaction with SAF

VRSG is interoperable with commonly used SAF systems by rendering entities three-dimensionally and providing positional feedback information and user control visually for Plan View Displays. MetaVR's flat-earth (MDX) runtime virtual world format provides for correlation with the Compact Terrain Database (CTDB) format.

OpenFlight conversion utilities

MetaVR provides free conversion utilities to convert OpenFlight databases to the flat-earth (MDX) format and to convert OpenFlight models to the MetaVR 3D model format. These conversion utilities enable you to reuse your existing OpenFlight databases and entities for visualization within VRSG. These utilities are distributed with VRSG. In addition, MetaVR provides a plugin for Presagis Creator, which enables you to export OpenFlight models in MetaVR's model format. Some 3D modeling packages can convert models in other popular formats to OpenFlight format, such as Okino Polytrans, Blue Rock's OpenFlight plug-in for Autodesk 3ds Max, and Carbon Graphics Geo.

If you need an entity that is not available in VRSG’s current model library, you can order commercially available 3D models in OpenFlight format from a number of sources and convert them to MetaVR’s runtime model format. If you need to edit a MetaVR model, a site license for the 3D model’s source data is available. Contact support@metavr.com for details.