Real-time visual simulation on PCs

In 1997 the US Army's Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation Command (STRICOM), recognizing the increasingly attractive economies of scale associated with PC 3D rendering technology, awarded a contract to the University of Central Florida's Institute for Simulation and Training (IST) to study the suitability of PCs for military real-time visual simulation (VisSim). The result was the Low-Cost Visual (LCV) Project. To date the LCV team has studied specifications for military VisSim systems to see how they compare with feature and performance criteria for PC graphics systems, and developed a real-time visual simulation benchmark suite. Currently we are trying to relate the complexity of visual databases used in the benchmark suite tests to databases used in typical military visual simulations. We also contemplate studying available graphics development software tools for the PC and may examine how available PC technology can be used in embedded real-time systems for military combat vehicles. Our results should interest the general VisSim community, however, since problems associated with real-time 3D rendering on a PC are the same whether simulations are built for the military or for a virtual reality arcade, for example.