TrianGraphics GmbH today announces the release of a Sensor Module for visualising databases with night vision, infra-red or thermal imaging cameras in real-time simulations.

Trian3D Builder’s new module offers the generation of additional textures, which include informations about the physical classification of the terrain and objects. Each pixel can contain miscellaneous physical attributes with weighting values. Those attributes can be used flexibly in the image generator according to the simulation requirements. Besides applications for sensor simulation also custom representations can be accomplished.

The sensor module is compatible with Trian3D Builder’s Geotypic Module and supports rendering vector features into the landscape texture.

The delivered object and texture libraries are enriched with additional ID images. The simple user interface provides all capabilities to define the properties quickly and easily.

Each physical attribute class receives a colour assignment, which helps to verify the generated landscape in the integrated 3D viewer.

Sandia Research Corporation (SRC) selected BSI’s Modern Air Combat Environment (MACE) combined with MetaVR’s Virtual Reality Scene Generator (VRSG) for its Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) research project.

Sandia Research Corporation (SRC) recently built a research test bed, called SimSystem, which monitors the behavior of participants in the roles of pilot, sensor operator, and data exploiter (navigator) as they fly missions in a shared virtual environment via DIS (distributed interactive simulation). SimSystem’s high-fidelity 3D simulation workstations are used by participants and their observers for a behavioral research study to evaluate human effectiveness factors involving multiple crews operating in the same battlespace. This research will be used to steer the development of realworld next-generation UAS interface tools used by the US armed forces and DOD organizations.

SRC chose the MACE/VRSG solution because they wanted an all-in-one solution used to create highfidelity virtual environments and provide the ability to program tasks or scenarios in a SAF/IG (Semiautomated Forces/Image Generator) environment with fully correlated terrain. In SRC’s SimSystem, MACE provides the UAV flight path, scenario management and entity control while VRSG simulates the UAV camera payload. MACE has a number of customized features to enable users to modify VRSG settings resulting in a comprehensive and easy to use simulation solution. BSI has also created some initial custom interfaces as a starting point for the project, which SRC researchers will modify as needed as testing goes on. For UAV scenarios that need to depict specific character activities on the ground (such as movements that resemble IED emplacement), MetaVR has also developed custom character models.

For more information, about MACE, please visit:
http://www.bssim.com/modern_air_combat_environment_mace.html

About BSI
Battlespace Simulations, founded in 2006, focuses on providing outstanding value in PC-based Electronic Warfare (EW) training simulations, stand-alone and distributed mission rehearsal tools, computer generated forces/semi-automated forces (CGF/SAF ) and threat generation for distributed simulation environments, and man-in-the-loop combat aircraft simulation. Our commercially developed simulations are written using the latest object-oriented frameworks, and development is continuously ongoing. For more information, please visit us at www.bssim.com.

The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor cockpit simulator, featuring MetaVR visuals, was demonstrated at the second annual USA Science and Engineering Festival held April 28-29, 2012 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington D.C.

The festival is the largest celebration of science in the US. Attendees, many of whom were school children, flew the immersive simulator and experienced the feeling of being a fighter jet pilot inside a full-working cockpit. Engineers at the demonstration discussed the opportunities for future pilots, as well as the engineering aspects of the simulation.

Holly Morris – USA Science and Engineering Festival: MyFoxDC.com

MetaVR multichannel visual systems are used in the F-22 Raptor traveling cockpit simulator, which is transported to various locations around the world for hosting demonstrations. The simulator is one of three that were developed by ZedaSoft, Inc. for Lockheed Martin. Zedasoft continues to provide development and support services for the program.

The demonstration of the F-22 cockpit simulator at the festival is captured in a video news clip by the Fox TV affiliate in Washington D.C.:

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/mornings/holly_live/holly-morris-usa-science-and-engineering-festival-042712

In the video news clip, the simulator can be seen in background starting at 1:46 during the interview with festival co-founders; the video focuses on the simulator starting at 2:49.

For more information about MetaVR visuals in Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor cockpit demonstrator simulator, see MetaVR’s website at
http://www.metavr.com/casestudies/f-22.html.

About MetaVR
MetaVR, founded in 1997, develops commercial PC-based software for the military simulation and training markets, featuring high-speed 3D visualization content and rapid creation of networked virtual worlds using real-world data. MetaVR’s real-time visual systems provide the fidelity of geospecific simulation with game-quality graphics. Users can build (with real-world photographic imagery, elevation data, and feature data) high-fidelity virtual worlds with our terrain generation tools, and render in real time, at 60Hz frame rates, the resulting virtual world with our real-time 3D visualization application, Virtual Reality Scene Generator. MetaVR systems are used for applications such as unmanned aerial systems trainers, manned flight simulators, mission planning and rehearsal, JTAC simulation training, urban operations training, and disaster management training. For more information, visit www.metavr.com.

Fredrikstad, Norway, 19 April 2012 – Norway’s projectiondesign® returns to the ITEC Defence, Training, Simulation and Education show this year with the most comprehensive line-up of products it has ever offered to the defence training and simulation market.

Making its worldwide debut at ExCeL, London from 22-24 May is the FS33 IR, the company’s latest LED-illuminated projector to stimulate Night Vision Goggles (NVG) for unrivalled simulated night-time vision. Built around the manufacturer’s ReaLED™ solid-state illumination platform, the FS33 IR adds a fourth LED to the conventional red, green and blue light sources, emitting infra-red light beyond the range visible to the human eye. This produces brighter night-vision imagery when stimulated by NVGs and provides a completely constant light output over time, eliminating the need for recalibration, reducing the maintenance and total cost of ownership to an absolute minimum.

Rest of the PR is here.

New contracts include Henry County Georgia Sheriff’s Office, Unnamed California Law Enforcement Agency, and international customers that have purchased VirTra’s simulation products through a licensed/registered distributor in Nepal and Indonesia.

New customers also acquired various simulator accessories, such as the patented Threat-Fire™ hostile return fire devices, tetherless recoil kits, and other simulator enhancements. Details are in the PR.

Submission deadline: May 25th 2012. This year, 18 conferences will be available on 2 different tracks will be organized at the same time: 1 track will deal with Human Resources/Training (introductory & advanced level), 1 track will deal with Communication/Marketing (introductory level) . Regarding the Serious Game Expo awards, 3 projects will be awarded: Best Serious Game HR/Training award 2012 , Best Serious Game Communication/Marketing award 2012 , Innovation prize Serious Game Expo 2012.

Serious Game Expo will take place in Lyon, France on 22-23 October 2012.

Including a record order intake coming from the United States. The company was awarded military contracts from more than 15 countries during the year. Some of the key orders this fiscal year included six P-8A operational flight trainers for Boeing and the United States Navy, four C-130J weapon systems trainers for Lockheed Martin and the United States Air Force, significant upgrade and services contracts for the German Air Force’s Tornado and Eurofighter training systems, several CAE 3000 Series AW139 helicopter simulators, and the world’s first AW189 full-flight simulator for Rotorsim. Details are here.

CAE stock drops -2.8%.

SWORD 5.0 now features new missions, behaviors and models, easier and improved exercise creation; company demonstrates seamless integration with other simulation systems, C2 systems and joint training applications

PARIS, April 19 2012 — At the ITEC exhibition and conference on booth #F120, MASA Group (“MASA”), a leading developer of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based Modeling & Simulation (M&S) software for the defense, public safety, emergency management and serious games markets, will launch SWORD 5.0, the latest version of MASA’s automated, aggregated constructive simulation software for efficient training and analysis.

SWORD has been designed to help users develop and deploy advanced and highly realistic scenarios, in particular for the training of decision-makers in commanding posts and crisis centers, and for the analysis of military doctrines and emergency procedures.

The new version of SWORD establishes a defense-security continuum and emulates civilian-military cooperation, offering defense and public safety systems integrators a host of new features and functionalities designed to address modern training and analysis requirements within a context of reduced budgets.

SWORD version 5.0 features new missions, behaviors and models, expanding the scope of operations to include Operations Other Than War (OOTW), Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear (CBRN) crisis management, low density conflicts such as counter terrorism, natural disasters, and the management of resource networks. In this release, advanced human factors automatically set levels of stress and fatigue based on the environment, resulting in enhanced simulated realism of field operations.

“MASA SWORD’s highly adaptable and open design makes it easy to integrate with established simulations and C2 systems,” Juan-Pablo Torres, MASA Group’s President and CEO, declared. “The new features inside SWORD 5.0 empower users to easily and cost-efficiently create new scenarios to suit their unique training and analysis objectives.”

The concept of “federations of simulations”, to include joint land, naval, and air training simulations, is realized through industry standard communication protocols such as High Level Architecture (HLA). Visitors to the MASA booth will observe demonstrations of SWORD 5.0 interoperating with Virtual Battle Space 2 (VBS2) and with VR Forces.

SWORD 5.0 interoperates with operational C2 (Command & Control) and C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) systems. ITEC visitors will witness, for example, SWORD’s integration with Systematic’s SitaWare battle management software via the Coalition Battle Management Language (CBML) standard.

MASA will also showcase LIFE, the company’s Artificial Intelligence middleware, integrated into SWORD.  LIFE brings unparalleled Artificial Intelligence capabilities to the world’s simulations, training applications, and serious games. Designed for developers requiring highly realistic and adaptable intelligent behaviors, LIFE is a powerful AI-middleware that marries an intuitive development environment with an unmatched level of productivity and flexibility, bringing a powerful dimension of human realism to simulations.

On May 24, between 09:30 and 11:00, Juan-Pablo Torres, President and CEO of MASA Group, will discuss the topic “Developing Adaptive Leaders’ control and preparedness with AI and doctrine-base simulation” within the “Addressing the People Dimension” theme of the ITEC conference.

About MASA

MASA Group (“MASA”) is a global company focused on the development of Artificial Intelligence-based Modeling & Simulation (M&S) software for the Defense, Homeland Security, Emergency Management, Serious Games and Games Development markets. A trusted developer of cutting-edge AI technology for over fifteen years, MASA has founded its success on products that combine scalability, adaptability and low cost of ownership, with a strong standards-driven approach to technology.

The MASA product range, including MASA SWORD and MASA LIFE is uniquely designed to simplify and optimize the implementation of Artificial Intelligence capabilities for automating and driving simulated behaviors. Such capabilities allow developers and end-users in various sectors to focus their efforts on enabling a series of cost-efficient and highly realistic applications – such as command staff training, crisis management preparedness, exercise preparation, after-action review, doctrine & equipment analysis, and corporate training.

MASA products are already in use by leading organizations worldwide, including the French Army, other major armies around the world, Amper Programas, CAE, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Saab, SGO, Thales and Cliffhanger Productions. For more information, visit www.masagroup.net.

MASA Press Contacts

North America and the UK: Véronique Froment, Highrez PR

tel: + 1 603 537 9248, e-mail: veronique.froment@masagroup.net

Rest of world: Eric Giaretto, Vice President, Marketing & Communications, MASA Group

tel: +33 6 80 26 42 40, e-mail: eric.giaretto@masagroup.net

All trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

AAI Corporation recently purchased 51 new MetaVR Virtual Reality Scene Generator (VRSG) licenses for use in its Universal Ground Control System (UGCS).

The UGCS is a NATO standardization agreement 4586-compliant command-and-control platform based on AAI’s One System architecture. It incorporates a digital Tactical Common Data Link (TCDL) for robust bandwidth and data security, and is designed to command and control multiple joint services UASs simultaneously.

Since 2002, AAI has purchased over 450 MetaVR VRSG licenses for ongoing fielding in its embedded Shadow Crew Trainer (SCT) One System Ground Control Station. These licenses support embedded trainers in Hunter, Shadow TUAS, Aerosonde, and Grey Eagle unmanned aerial systems, which are used by U.S. Army and Army National Guard units. AAI also uses 109 MetaVR VRSG licenses for its Shadow Training Aids, Devices, Simulators, and Simulations (TADSS) desktop training suite. AAI produces and supports a complete family of advanced tactical unmanned aircraft systems, including Shadow systems flown by the U.S. Army, National Guard, and Marine Corps.

The SCT is a mission-level training device that enables users to train on their specific roles, as well as team-level communication and mission rehearsal. In June 2011, the SCT was granted accreditation by the U.S. Army Aviation Center Directorate of Simulation. This means that users can log SCT hours as flight hours toward their overall requirements for Shadow UAS training. The simulated flight hours reduce air frame fatigue expenditure that would normally occur as students would train to become proficient using the real aircraft.

Delivered with the 51 new MetaVR VRSG licenses is MetaVR’s brand new 3D model of the Shadow RQ-7B Increased Endurance (IE) UAS, which is available at no charge to users on active maintenance.

For more information, see the MetaVR website at http://www.metavr.com/casestudies/TUAV.html

About MetaVR
MetaVR, founded in 1997, develops commercial PC-based software for the military simulation and training markets, featuring high-speed 3D visualization content and rapid creation of networked virtual worlds using real-world data. MetaVR’s real-time visual systems provide the fidelity of geospecific simulation with game-quality graphics. Users can build (with real-world photographic imagery, elevation data, and feature data) high-fidelity virtual worlds with our terrain generation tools, and render in real time, at 60Hz frame rates, the resulting virtual world with our real-time 3D visualization application, Virtual Reality Scene Generator. MetaVR systems are used for applications such as unmanned aerial systems trainers, manned flight simulators, mission planning and rehearsal, JTAC simulation training, urban operations training, and disaster management training. For more information, visit www.metavr.com.