Towards an Automated Pipeline for the Translation and Optimization of Geospatial Data for Virtual Environments

The infusion of commercial game technology into U.S. Army training, simulation, and instructional domains has resulted in more immersive and engaging experiences for Soldiers to hone their skills. However, the influx of such technology comes at a significant cost, specifically in the creation of virtual environments in which these skills are simulated and practiced. Today's typical commercial triple-A game title cost upwards of $40- $60M and four to six years to develop, much of which is spent on producing the digital assets used to populate the scene (models, animations, etc). Additionally, this content is often suited for a custom type of rendering technology, and often cannot be reused without significant manual modification. Unfortunately, the Army has neither the financial or personnel resources available to create such highly immersive, reusable virtual content, nor the time to invest when current operations call for training or simulation data in a matter of hours, not months or years. In this paper, we discuss a research initiative aimed at significantly reducing the time and cost for converting, optimizing, and enhancing existing geospatial data for today's virtual environments. The goal is a completely automated process for ingesting existing military terrain data and outputting a technology agnostic representation in less than 24 hours. See also ADM002187. Proceedings of the Army Science Conference (26th) Held in Orlando, Florida on 1-4 December 2008, The original document contains color images.