Real-Time Network Virtual Military Simulation System

Network virtual reality is an advanced, distributed interactive and collaborative computer graphics technology for presenting information and exploring data in the 3D virtual environment. In this paper, a real-time network virtual military simulation system is developed. The digital terrain model and SPOT images of the Geographic Information System are integrated with the weather simulation of the particle system to construct a 3D virtual environment. The main features of the system include (1) ROAMing is used to construct and visualize the 3D virtual environment, (2) particle system is employed to simulate the weather conditions, (3) physical, gravity and collision detection are adopted to fulfill the realistic interactions, and (4) network communications is supported for distributed multi-users. Several computer graphics accelerating schemes, such as real-time optimally adapting meshes, view frustum culling, level-of-detail, are used to speedup the rendering, and dead reckoning to reduce the flow rate of network to make the distributed real-time VR feasible.