Rapid Environment Creation

The ability to rapidly create the environment within which the simulation occurs is essential for time critical, life threatening applications. Environment creation in RealWorld is analogous to level and art creation in a video game. RealWorld® provides a rich toolset to automate the ingestion and editing of data to allow mission rehearsal capabilities in minutes and hours rather than the weeks and months it takes in the video game world.

It is also important to provide rich, realistic environments that create the sense of immersion necessary for a successful training or rehearsal experience. Given the tradeoffs between realism and resource consumption RealWorld let's the user decide how much detail to include. For example, a simulation to train first responders on an explosion scenario in a crowded urban area might require the affected building to be very accurate, including ingress/egress routes, location and physics of the windows, doors, and building; the look of the building; the landscaping; the plumbing and electrical systems, whereas the surrounding buildings may only require accuracy in location, footprint, and elevation.

We empower you to work with whatever terrain data you have available and then enable you to enhance it to improve the experience as your data improves and time allows. So even if you have no data, you can still create a simulation environment. Here's an example where RealWorld was used to create an island from scratch. Even this example was created in 10 minutes:

Terrain ingestion in RealWorld

If you have elevation, imagery, or vector data, RealWorld will ingest that using industry standard technology. We refer to this as the Base terrain. Then we provide you the tools to improve upon it subject to your time constraints.

As details are added the terrain becomes richer, more accurate, or both. Base Terrain might include only elevation and imagery, and can be created with a simple drag-drop interface. To add more detail, you can import vector files e.g., roads, building exteriors, and land use/land cover. The user can enhance the environment further by rapidly "painting" the ground with game-quality, visually improved terrain types such as grass, sand, mud, and forest. Finally, the environment can add even more detail such as fully furnished interiors; physics so windows behave like windows; object materials so they behave realistically when hit with a bullet; and additional detail such as trees, trash cans, and parking meters from the large library of provided objects. The level of geo-specificity, visual and operational fidelity are decided and controlled by the user to create a powerful, immersive experience.

This rapid environment creation functionality is included with every copy of RealWorld.