Generating enhanced natural environments and terrain for interactive combat simulations (GENETICS)

Download
Author
Wells, William D.
Date
2005-09Advisor
Darken, Rudolph
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Virtual battlefields devoid of vegetation deprive soldiers of valuable training in the critical aspects of terrain tactics and terrain-based situational awareness, but creating realistic landscapes by hand is notoriously expensive; requiring both proprietary tools and trained artists, hampering rapid scenario generation and limiting reuse. GENETICS is a new object placement scheme where the arduous task of placing vegetation objects is reduced to finding readily-available source data and setting a few parameters. Our approach constructs large-scale natural environments at run-time using a procedural image-based algorithm without the need for skilled artists or proprietary tools. The resulting vegetation-laden terrain looks realistic, and the algorithm can be extended to incorporate a wide variety of environmental factors. GENETICS offers researchers the ability to quickly and easily build consistent large-scale synthetic natural environments to examine vegetation clutter requirements necessary to accomplish distributed mission training tasks. This dissertation presents and implements the GENETICS algorithm, compares it against other vegetation placement schemes, and outlines how simulationists can use GENETICS to quickly and cheaply build large-scale natural environments. It also touches upon level of detail algorithms, ecotype modeling and how GENETICS can be used to generate land cover data where none exists.
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Generating Enhanced Natural Environments and Terrain for Interactive Combat Simulations (Genetics) / IMAGE 2005 Conference
Wells, William D.; Darken, Christian J. (2005);Virtual battlefields devoid of vegetation deprive soldiers of valuable training in the critical aspects of terrain tactics and terrain-based situational awareness. Barren landscapes fail to provide trainees with necessary ... -
Creating digital environments for multi-agent simulation
Tanner, Mark B. (Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2003-12);There are few tools available for military and civilian simulation developers to quickly and efficiently develop high-fidelity digital environments capable of supporting high-resolution, agent-based simulation. In this ... -
EXPERIMENTAL ASSESSMENT OF ENTANGLEMENT FOR AN UNMANNED UNDERWATER VEHICLE WITH AN OPEN, THREE-BLADED PROPELLER
Irgens, Katherine E. (Monterey, CA; Naval Postgraduate School, 2020-12);This thesis evaluates the entanglement of an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) propelled by an open, three-bladed propeller when operating in marine vegetation native to littoral environments. A tow tank populated with ...