The Devil in the Details
Written by Kenya McCullum
MT2 2011 Volume: 16 Issue:4 (June)
The relationship between the gaming industry and military simulation is coming full circle, said Cliff Ingari, the chief operating officer at AVT Simulation. And the way this worm has turned is electrifying the simulation industry and providing the fuel for innovation that benefits military training.
“It’s wonderful to see. There has been this reversal—previously, the gaming industry was leveraging the technology that was being developed in the world of military simulation and training,” he said. “Now, it’s come full circle because of the prominence and amount of dollars being pumped into the gaming industry. We’re now leveraging that technology to increase our products’ fidelity.”
While members of the simulation industry have been able to leverage gaming technology to create products that train current and future soldiers for the battlefield, these companies are also keenly aware that the goals of these two industries are completely different. Whereas in the gaming industry a great looking game that people enjoy playing is the ultimate goal, military simulation manufacturers must also keep realism in mind when making their visually appealing products. In games, players can have multiple lives, a huge stockpile of weapons, and unlimited ammunition that protects them against the bad guys they are fighting. In military simulation, any unrealistic scenario will not effectively prepare soldiers for the realities of their missions—and this negative training value could ultimately put them in harm’s way.
“A lot of training is cognitive to put the warfighters in the mindset that what they’re doing in the training and simulation device is actually how they’re going to respond in the real world,” Ingari said. “We’re conditioning them on how to respond in the real world so, in a sense, they’re rehearsing and trying to learn in the simulated environment so that they don’t make mistakes in the real world.”
Achieving High Fidelity
While all industry partners that supply training tools to the military share a common goal—a product with a high level of realism at an affordable price—these companies have different strategies for achieving this goal.
AVT Simulation
AVT Simulation creates training and simulation solutions that are powered by the underlying technology used in video games. One way that the company has been able to effectively leverage gaming technology for military training is by applying it to the military’s legacy systems—that is, the older training systems that have been used by the military that, while not antiquated or teetering on the verge of obsolescence, can benefit from the enhancements that gaming technology provides. With military training budgets decreasing, completely replacing these systems can be prohibitively expensive, so AVT’s solutions give these trainers a much needed facelift— thus still keeping their basic infrastructure in place—while not breaking the bank.
“It’s like putting a fresh coat of paint on your house,” Ingari said. “It’s the same old house, but in our world of training simulation that visual appeal, based on what we see with our native eyes, is really what immerses the individual being trained into that environment.”
Examples of how AVT is able to accomplish this can be seen in products like the recurring skills trainer, which is used to train military personnel such as Apache aircraft pilots.
Disti
Disti provides interface design tools that are used to create three-dimensional training exercises. For example, the company’s GL Studio is a commercial tool that is used for developing aerospace maintenance trainers that include intricate details of an aircraft, such the instrumentation found in the plane’s cockpit. In order to give this product the level of fidelity that the military needs, Disti works with the manufacturers of the original equipment, taking photographs of the aircraft to capture all of the details of the plane—from the controls to the wires to the wear and tear on a specific aircraft.
“We took the tactic of taking high resolution photographs of cockpits and instrument panels because it actually retained a lot of the fidelity that existed in the actual aircraft—so that you could actually see the nicks and scratches that happen when using an aircraft, and all those nicks and scratches would translate into the training device,” said Scott Ariotti, the company’s director of sales and marketing. “Sometimes the users would sit in the cockpit and they would know what aircraft we took those pictures from because they recognized a chip taken out of the faceplate. Our artists don’t clean any of that up when the content is produced because it gives the product a certain level of believability to the environment.”
The result of this work is that users can hardly tell the difference between the trainer and the real aircraft. In fact, Ariotti said, when a client was reviewing Disti’s product by looking at a picture of the maintenance trainer against a picture of the actual aircraft, at one point, the client forgot which screen was which.
Presagis
Presagis, which is a subsidiary of CAE Inc., makes high-fidelity simulation technology that can be used to create training scenarios and immersive environments. These products focus not only on what real-world systems look like, but also how they behave.
“When you’re firing a missile, it can’t just fly out there and hit a target, you have to know that the missile is going at the right speed, and has all of the equations and physics behind the way that missile flies. It has to be accurate. That’s what gives it that fidelity so that a trainee isn’t given the impression that this missile can hit something 10 miles away, when, in fact, its real range is five miles. That’s really what fidelity is all about—making a product as real as you can, but also as real as required,” said Nick Giannias, VP of Research and Technology at Presagis. “If trainees learn to do something in a product that’s been simulated using our tools, it has to translate into something that they can do in the real world and the results should be the same or as close as possible.”
Some of the products that Presagis makes include Creator—which is a 3-D modeling software tool that allows the user to create a model of objects in the real world—and Stage, a product that provides high-level behavior that lets users build realistic battle scenarios.
QinetiQ North America
QinetiQ North America creates a training tool for the Tomahawk missile system that allows operators to practice in a robust environment that will replicate what soldiers will experience in the real aircraft. To create this realism at an affordable price, the company leverages existing technology engines— including some public domain tools, like the Delta3D tool that is produced by the Naval Postgraduate School. As a result, QinetiQ’s systems allow users to suspend disbelief when using the products, which helps create an immersive experience for trainees.
“When you’re sitting in that ship’s combat information center and you’re practicing a launch, it’s no different than if you’re in a simulator and in fact, many people come out of the simulations after four hours and they then realize they were sitting by the pier,” said Mark Nesselrode of QinetiQ. “The military wants to get the shock and awe over while trainees are still here at home station. They want them to get used to the very different sounds, sights and cultural immersion— that’s where the military wants to go and that’s really what we’re going to have to do just because of the very high cost for training these days." ♦