VT MAK is pleased to announce the release of VR-Forces 4.5! This major feature release adds many new features, while continuing to make significant improvements to our visuals, performance, and content. Some of the highlights include:

 

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MÄK Announcement

VT MAK Announces the Release of VR-Forces 4.5

Dear MAK Customer,

VT MAK is pleased to announce the release of VR-Forces 4.5!

This major feature release adds many new features, while continuing to make significant improvements to our visuals, performance, and content.  Some of the highlights include:

  • Dynamic Terrain – the ability to damage buildings, trees, and bridges; open/close doors, and more
  • Pedestrian areas, and improved workflow and behaviors for crowds and pedestrian traffic
  • UI for creating and updating plans has been significantly improved for both readability and usability
  • Improved vehicle movement on roads
  • Many visual improvements from VR-Vantage 2.2, including High Dynamic Range rendering (HDR)
  • Improved CDB support, including run-time publishing of elevation and imagery layers

See below for details on specific improvements in each of the various categories:

Behavior and Entity Models

  • Vehicle Movement on roads has been greatly improved. Vehicles will navigate turns on city streets in a realistic manner. Vehicles will pass and detect obstacles realistically when traveling on roads.
  • Fast roping animation. Solders can disembark from helicopters by sliding down ropes.
  • Hand grenades. Soldiers can throw fragmentation, smoke, and flash/bang hand grenades.
  • Follow behavior for aircraft has been dramatically improved.
  • Helicopters take wind and the weight of cargo into account when they calculate fuel consumption.
  • Entities can walk or drive onto vehicles and automatically embark if the parent vehicle is configured for this capability.
  • Calculation of munition damage is now based on the generic type of munition - explosive, kinetic, armor-piercing, and fragmentation, and on the specific munition’s power.  This means that simulation objects no longer need to configure damage for each specific munition. Configuration of munition damage is both simpler and more realistic. The previous damage models are still supported.
  • Randomized simulation objects. A randomized simulation object is an object on the Simulation Objects Palette that references a list of specific simulation objects. When you add a randomized simulation object to a scenario, VR-Forces randomly chooses an object from the list to create. Once they are created, they keep whatever simulation object type is used. Previously, if the scenario was saved and rerun, a different selection of specific objects would be chosen.
  • High fidelity sensor simulation. You can now set the ambient air temperature on the Weather page of the Environment Conditions dialog box. VR-Forces will store this information in the scenario and transmit it over the network.  While VR-Forces’ built-in model behaviors are not affected by it, customers who have high fidelity sensor model visuals (for example using SensorFX) can use this information to add realism to other simulators in their federation.
  • Many new models, including quadcopters and Air Mule UAV, more DI-Guy characters, and surface and ground vehicles.

 

Terrain

  • Dynamic terrain. Terrain features such as buildings, bridges, and trees that have appropriate switch nodes can change dynamically in response to detonations and other scenario events. These changes alter both the visual and simulation terrain, and are published over the network to all VR-Vantage and VR-Forces Simulation Engine instances in the scenario. For example, buildings can explode, doors and windows can open and close, and bridges can be destroyed.
  • Improved performance for CDB terrains – we now implement run-time publishing of Imagery/Elevation layers from CDB without requiring pre-processing.
  • The ability to debug earth files by turning individual layers on and off to tune performance in streaming terrains.  

Pedestrian Traffic and Human Character Models

  • Pedestrian areas allow you to create an area and have it immediately populated with civilian entities that will wander in the area.
  • Improved performance for Wander In Area task: Entities can choose more appropriate wander destinations faster than in previous versions.
  • Improved DI-Guy character configuration. You can now configure the hand items and heads used by specific characters.
  • Support for DI-Guy variants (Fat/Skinny), and a new DI-Guy settings page.
  • Human characters can die when hit by vehicles. This feature affects performance and is disabled by default.

 

Visualization Changes

  • VR-Forces 4.5 uses VR-Vantage 2.2 as the basis for the VR-Forces GUI, and inherits many visual improvements and performance optimizations from that version.
  • Support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering – so that the diversity of brightness in a real world scene can be more accurately represented.  Bright sunlight behind an object will “bleed over” and create realistic back-lighting effects, while bright lights at night will “bloom” or glow.
  • Trailing Effects Improvements. Users can change trailing effects (dust clouds, etc) based on the type of terrain a vehicle is driving over.

 

Scenario Management

  • Scenarios are now saved in a compressed format (zip) with the extension .scnx. All scenario data is saved to the repository. This makes it easy to share and archive scenarios.
  • When you rewind a scenario, plan windows and information dialog boxes that were open before you rewound get opened again if the simulation objects are in the rewound scenario.
  • When you create a scenario, you can disable the global weather settings.
  • You can update a scenario with changes to visual models made in the Simulation Object Editor without shutting down VR-Forces.

Tasks and Sets

  • Scripted set data requests. You can now create scripts that function like set data requests. They get executed without interrupting the current simulation object task. This makes it much easier to extend the user interface to add new functionality for the scenario builder.
  • The Flee task chooses the point to flee to more quickly. However, there is no longer an option to stop when hidden and fleeing entities do not avoid other entities.
  • New tasks for rotary-wing entities to pick up and drop off cargo at a destination.
  • Indirect fire events have a new timing option. Indirect fire event areas can be set to inactive and the indirect fire event does not take place until the area is activated. This allows you to begin the event with the Activation set data request manually or in a plan.
  • Set DI-Guy Characteristics. You can change the head of a DI-Guy character and change the body weight.
  • New aircraft tasks for Air Traffic Management users:
    • Generate Air Traffic From Flight Plans – Reads X-Plane flight plans and randomly generates aircraft to fly the routes.
    • Land at Airport Near Location. – Looks at X-Plane data to find the nearest airport, picks runway after considering the wind direction to land the plane.
  • New tasks for Ground Simulation:
    • Throw Grenade at Location
    • Throw Grenade at Target
    • Fast Rope Insertion
  • New Tasks for RW Aircraft (with appropriately-configured OpenFlight models)
    • Close Cargo Door
    • Open Cargo Door
  • New Aircraft Refueling tasks
    • Deploy Refueling Boom
    • Stow Refueling Boom
  • New Sets for easier scenario generation:
    • Set Sensor Enabled
    • Set Invulnerable – Entities which should not be destroyed in a scenario can be set to Invulnerable.
    • Set Invisible – Embarked entities can be tagged as invisible in 3D.

Plans and Usability

The process of creating and updating plans has been significantly improved for both readability and usability:

  • Ability to drag and drop statements within the plan window.
  • Ability to drag and drop statements between plans, including dragging associated triggers and condition blocks.
  • Visual identification of active conditional blocks.
  • Ability to name condition blocks to improve readability of the plan.
  • Support for two types of variables (simulation object and created object) in plans.
  • Coordinated plans with a new condition - Wait Until. This condition causes a simulation object to wait until a condition becomes true allowing for coordinated planning.

 

Saved Window Layouts. Create and quickly switch between saved window layouts in the GUI, including the preconfigured "Scenario Player" or "Scenario Editor" layouts.  All of the toolbars and dock-able windows’ state (shown/hidden and position) can be saved and restored on demand.

Tactical Graphics

  • Export point, linear, and areal tactical graphics to shapefiles. You can import shapefiles and the features will be implemented as point, linear, or areal tactical graphics.
  • Polygonal, circular, and elliptical weather areas. You can now specify that weather areas not be filled.
  • Terrain Draw Area tactical graphic, which displays polygons known to the simulation engine to better understand why entities behave as they do.
  • Ability to set the characteristics of tactical graphics using a set data request. This allows you to change the state of a tactical graphic from a plan for dynamic drawing on the display.

 

Entity Configurations

  • You can now specify that simulation objects in a 3D observer mode be invisible when they are embarked.
  • You can now specify a slot name and slot type when configuring embarkation slots.
  • You can now import, prune, and export model and element definitions for rapid merging of overlays for VR-Vantage. For example, if you have configured one or two new entities, you can generate a VR-Vantage overlay to drop into a VR-Vantage install so that the entities will be displayed correctly without having to manually merge model and element definitions files.  

For a complete description of these new features, as well as information on other improvements including bugs fixed, please see the release notes.

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Thanks!
Jim

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