Game engine may improve realism of tactical trainer.

• Author: Insinna, Valerie
• Position: VIRTUAL REALITY

* An information technology company is trying to stretch the limits of a popular video-game engine with the goal of making its tactical trainer more lifelike, including improvements in non-player characters' intelligence and more realistic virtual landscapes.

The simulation wing of Ashburn, Va.-based Intelligent Decisions developed the Army's Dismounted Soldier Training System, a virtual-reality environment where soldiers' movements, such as firing a gun, are physically replicated within the game.

The system currently runs the Army's program of record game called Virtual Battlespace 2, but the service has commissioned Intelligent Decisions to research whether using a commercial video-game engine--the Unreal Engine 3--can expand the behaviors of soldier, enemy and civilian avatars to provide a more realistic experience.

The research project is part of a contract with the Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command at Fort Belvoir, Va.

"Unreal is an open platform, and we're able to go in and manipulate the source code to do almost anything we want to do because of its flexibility," said Clarence Pape, vice president of simulation and training. "The program of record, VBS2, is locked, and so I have to work within the parameters that the Army has prescribed."

For instance, when a soldier walks up to a civilian avatar in a VBS2 scenario, the civilian character has a limited number of responses. By using Unreal, Pape believes those responses can become more varied and sophisticated, such as a civilian choosing to give more or less information about insurgents based upon the facial expressions of the soldier.

"It's making all of those elements inside the training exercise behave more realistically, more human-like," he said. "Instead of having them do only one prescribed thing, there is a myriad of activities that they can do based upon what's going on in their surroundings."

The research focuses on improving the on-screen representation of the soldier's avatar, such as allowing him to wave his hands above his head, fire around comers or take his hand off the weapon, and showing these...