Vermont Air National Guard Airfield

The Vermont Air National Guard (VT ANG) recently acquired 32 new VRSG licenses to use in their F-16 training simulators.

In conjunction with this purchase, MetaVR is building 3D terrain of the VT ANG base facilities and airfield at the Burlington International Airport.

	Real-time VRSG screen capture of a portion of the virtual VT ANG base and airfield.

About the database

The 6-geocell Metadesic-formatted 3D terrain is comprised of 47 GB of data of Vermont and upstate New York, with 60-meter post spacing, 1 meter imagery with 0.5 meter imagery inset of the VT ANG airfield and base facilities.

	Real-time VRSG rendering of an F-16 entity taking off from the runway of the virtual VT ANG airfield. Click the image to swap rendered and wireframe views.

About the models

The virtual terrain contains several high-resolution models of cultural features of the area: 17 site-specific buildings such as hangars, offices, and storage facilities; a high-resolution F-16 aircraft model; and the VT ANG runway. All of these site-specific models were created with textures derived from high-resolution photographs recently taken of the area with a 10-megapixel camera. Content from MetaVR's 3D model libraries is also used on the terrain.

	Real-time aerial view in VRSG of the virtual VT ANG base and airfield. The building models and the F-16 model were created specifically for this terrain; additional cultural feature models shown in the scene are from MetaVR's 3D model libraries.

	VRSG real-time view from a hangar on the virtual VT ANG base and airfield, featuring a high-resolution F-16 aircraft model.

The virtual terrain also contains a commercial air terminal within Burlington International Airport, as shown in the images below.

   
Views of a commercial terminal at the virtual Burlington International Airport.

Shown below is a VRSG screen capture of the terrain tiles of the Lake Champlain shoreline, which seamlessly meet water tiles generated by VRSG. Multi-textured, animated, normal-mapped water surfaces, a feature forthcoming in the release of version 5.4 of VRSG, are in the cutout regions identified as water.

	VRSG real-time aerial view of the virtual shoreline region of Lake Champlain. Click the image to swap rendered and wireframe views.

Actual and simulated views of the airfield site

Below is a series of images of the VT ANG airfield and base facilities. You can compare actual photographs of the area on the left side with the VRSG screen captures of the simulated view on the right. The models of buildings and other structures are photorealistic; the models were created from a large set of high-resolution photographs of the VT ANG air base and the larger Burlington International Airport area.

Photographs of the VT Air National Guard airfield and base facilities at Burlington International Airport.	Screen captures of VRSG rendering of MetaVR's real-time 3D terrain of the VT Air National Guard airfield and base facilities at Burlington International Airport.

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 real-time MPEG encoding feature.

This database will be available free of charge to all US Government agencies and contractors (for official use only) and will require VRSG forthcoming version 5.4 or higher.