Enhanced Ft. Benning, McKenna Urban Training Site

The McKenna urban operations training center at Ft. Benning is now using an enhanced version of the MetaVR-developed 3D virtual replica of their facility for live training of soldiers. The McKenna site features an urban village that was built by Army engineers, which belongs to Ft. Benning’s Soldier Battlelab. This site is primarily used for live, virtual and constructive experimentation on soldier systems, weapons and equipment. The visual realism of MetaVR’s 3D virtual replica of the urban warfare training area was enhanced by using GIS survey data for feature placement and digital photographs of the site to aid in geo-locating geotypical vegetation.

Aerial photo of the McKenna training site.

MetaVR's virtual McKenna training site.

Users at Ft. Benning currently take advantage of MetaVR's new 3D Layering Control Plugin for ESRI ArcMap. By using the plugin to control the transparency of cultural features in the database, they can visualize more easily what is going on inside the buildings during exercises.

Using MetaVR's new 3D Layering Control Plugin for ESRI ArcMap, a specific building in an exercise can be made semi-transparent with the intent to observe live-instrumented participants moving about the interior of the structure.The scene in the above imaqe is from a MetaVR demo scenario.

When the outer walls of the buildings in the virtual world are semi-transparent, actual live-instrumented soldiers are visible while they are inside the real-world buildings that are mapped to corresponding virtual buildings.

Scenario rendered in Virtual Reality Scene Generator (VRSG) on MetaVR's 3D virtual McKenna urban training database.

Overview of the database

As part of the visual fidelity enhancements to the database, the locations of buildings and roads within the database have been refined using survey data taken at the site. Survey points were brought into the Virtual Reality Scene Generator (VRSG) environment via a cultural feature data file and were used as guides to adjust placement of cultural elements. The resulting terrain database represents the true real-world coordinates of these elements to within a 0.1 meter tolerance. This degree of correlation is vital for enabling visualization of real-time feeds of positional data by instrumented soldiers carrying out exercises in the urban warfare training site.

Using .5 meter resolution imagery with 30-meter elevation data of the Ft. Benning area, MetaVR's full database extends the legacy geotypical virtual McKenna site to a 30 x 40 km terrain database, using the MetaVR WorldPerfect rapid terrain database generation system.

WorldPerfect project of the extended Ft. Benning database, including the buildings and road network.

Correlated image using the MetaVR Plugin for ESRI ArcMap.

Geospecific aerial photography imagery was used to replace the geotypical textures used on the original McKenna terrain. A key component of realistic urban warfare infantry training is traversing the avenues of approach to the town. The geographic extents of the MetaVR database and the extensive tree lines (denoted by green triangles in the ESRI ArcMap image above) around the McKenna site provide an environment for training soldiers how to approach urban centers undetected.

Correlated VRSG screen capture of the aerial views shown above in WorldPerfect and ESRI ArcMap.

The buildings and trees were geo-located on the terrain to match the imagery. Buildings were placed visually by displaying survey data from the McKenna site as survey sphere objects in the database using the MetaVR 3D Layering Control Plugin for ArcMap. The survey data taken from the site and provided by Ft. Benning was put into cultural feature (clt) files with survey points mapped to survey sphere models as shown in the examples below. The two co-located survey spheres are 1m and 2m radius. Click the image below to see its enlarged version.

MetaVR improved the original OpenFlight building models by enhancing their interior geometry and applying new photospecific and photorealistic textures to the surfaces based on photographs of the buildings at the McKenna site. For example, the model of Building H, shown below on the right contains some photospecific textures of the actual building shown on the left.

The building models have radiosity (soft shadows) applied to the geometry to increase their realism. Improvements also include the addition of other cultural features to the database, such as streetlight poles with electrical cables, and geo-located geotypical trees.

Specifications

Specifications for the extended Ft. Benning, McKenna terrain database, constructed with MetaVR WorldPerfect:

	Image/view statistics (for the MetaVR image above):
		Far horizon FoV Polygon count Display Color depth Frame rate Graphics card		= 50 km = 45 degrees horizontal = 476,188 triangles = 2560 x 1600 pixel res. with 4 subpixel AA = 32-bit = 60 fps = ATI Radeon x1900 Pro 512 MB DDR memory
	Terrain database statistics:
		Imagery build time Geometry build time Database size Size on disk		= 7 hours 52 minutes = 1 minute 50 seconds = 30 x 40 km = 2.5 GB
		Extents:
			N32 32' W-85 01' W-84 35' N32 11'
		Terrain LoDs Texture LoDs Terrain post spacing Source imagery		= 6 = 7 = 32 mpp = 13.5 GB
		Elevation coverage:
		30.0 mpp shuttle radar topography (1 arc second)
		Imagery coverage:
		0.5 mpp color McKenna site (4 x 4 km)
		Cultural features:
		12 geo-located phototextured buildings with interiors 1 hybrid photospecific/photorealistic building 103 streetscape and other models 76-element power-line network 1,510 geotypical volumetric trees of varying types 9,738 segment road and track network

Actual and simulated views of the McKenna urban training site

In the following set of images, you can compare photographs of the actual McKenna site on the left with VRSG screen captures on the right of MetaVR’s virtual McKenna site within the Ft. Benning database.

Photographs of the McKenna training site at Ft. Benning.	VRSG screen captures of MetaVR's real-time virtual McKenna training site at Ft. Benning.

Click here to view real-time recordings of scenarios rendered in VRSG featuring this database and others. The media clips were made with VRSG's new real-time MPEG encoding feature.

The MetaVR Ft. Benning terrain database is available free of charge to all US Government agencies and contractors (for official use only) and requires VRSG version 5.0 or higher.