Dynamic Terrain

Abstract

While many are familiar with flight simulators, there is also a growing body of ground-based simulation training systems. The Army/DARPA sponsored SIMNET project (Nelms 1988) involved over 200 armor and aircraft simulators in a complex network, designed to teach combined arms combat skills. The follow-on Close Combat Tactical Trainer (CCTT) project will be the largest training simulator acquisition in history. In addition, realtime interactive simula tion is moving beyond military training into the potentially much larger market of commercial, entertainment and educational applications currently being called "Virtual Reality" (Furness 1988). However, no existing realtime simulation supports a truly interactive world. In particular, the terrain (soil, water and vegetation) is nearly or completely immutable in today's simula tors. In a word, the terrain is not dynamic. This Project explores the hypothesis that it is economically feasible to construct networked realtime simulators which incorporate useful simulations of dynamic terrain phenomena. The authors have evaticated the computational requirements of realtime graphical dynamic terrain simula tion with both theoretical models and prototypes, and conclude that useful levels of terrain dynamics can be incorporated in the next generation of low-cost, high-volume training simulators and virtual environ ments.