U.S. Navy Awards PLANET LLC $750,000 to Build Hypercosm 3D Weather Simulation Tool Madison, Wisconsin - October 15, 2008: The difficulty of operating aboard U.S. Navy ships and aircraft can change in the blink of an eye depending on the weather. It is therefore critical to incorporate the effects of changing weather conditions in training simulations. Unfortunately, weather conditions - ranging from blowing sand, heavy fog and strong winds to waves that cause roll and pitch - can be expensive to simulate in standard PC-based training. This means that most simulations choose to focus only on the visual aspects of weather, such as cloud cover, and can't begin to demonstrate the physical effects of weather on objects in a realistic manner. To fill this training gap, PLANET began work on a software tool to simulate real-time weather conditions and other shipboard physical phenomena that could interface with common 3D graphics programs, such as Autodesk's 3ds Max. After a successful prototype demonstration, PLANET LLC was awarded a $750,000 Small Business Innovative Research Phase II Grant from NAVAIR to complete development of a software plug-in for 3ds Max that will assign physics-based weather effects to 3D models and simulations used to create on-line training. "The tool's innovation is to base each condition on realistic physical data, allowing it to behave appropriately within a simulation," said Abe Megahed, PLANET's Chief Technical Officer and lead software developer for Hypercosm. "This means that rain and wind will cause reactions on objects or users in a scene, which greatly changes the fidelity of training simulations." PLANET's weather simulation tools are based on data gathered with computational fluid dynamics modeling on aircraft and ship models. Algorithms are then built to simulate their physical behaviors in real-time. The tool will also include multiplayer communication, pre-defined scenario authoring, and statistical performance tracking, leading to a set of commercially available templates for use in deployable, web-based training. “This project will result in a very powerful but user-friendly tool for developers of 3D training and operations,” said Thomas Crabb, President of PLANET LLC. “Web-based simulation will soon be the basis for most training on complex systems, and when they can be authored quickly and cost effectively – and still contain a high level of fidelity – they will become the training option of choice.”
COMPANY EXPERTISE PLANET's Hypercosm software group focuses on 3D interactive content creation and tools for high fidelity simulation, training and web-based 3D visualization. Their content development team is backed with a suite of software tools, including:
ABOUT HYPERCOSM Hypercosm creates products and technologies to enable highly interactive 3D simulations for training, education and design visualization. Hypercosm's patented approach to encoding object geometry and behaviors results in low file size simulations that can be delivered over the web practically and effectively, even with low bandwidth connections. Hypercosm products and services have provided web-based interactive astronaut training, assembly instructions, familiarization training, science education aids and 3D architectural designs. For more information and to view solution demonstrations, visit us on-line at www.hypercosm.com.
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