Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim) is a specialist in immersive military training solutions which VRFocus has covered on a number of occasions as the company has advanced its virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications. Today, BISim has announced its next-generation training software VBS4 which sees the entire planet digitised.
Officially unveiling VBS4 in December 2019 at I/ITSEC 2019, planet rendering uses a curated global dataset, a massive library of vegetation and clutter models, as well as advanced procedural enhancement. Therefore militaries should be able to reduce the cost and time of building new detailed virtual terrains. Improvements over VBS3 include view distance enhancements and further optimized VR/AR visualizations.
New features include:
- VBS Plan – a time-saving mission planning capability allowing instructors and administrators to draw static plans on 2D and 3D maps using standard military symbols and leverage AI forces to execute those plans in the virtual environment.
- VBS Geo – an easy to use collaborative terrain editing application that doesn’t require geospatial data expertise.
- VBS World Server – a terrain server streaming whole-earth terrain layers from the Cloud or a local computer or network to VBS4, reducing hardware and terrain development costs.
“We are further accelerating the capabilities of our product line by introducing VBS4,” said BISim CEO Arthur Alexion in a statement. “VBS4 brings whole-earth capabilities to desktop military simulation and training. Whilst VBS3 is PC based and has size limitations for terrain areas, VBS4 offers a massive step-change in modularity, openness and ease-of-use as well as the performance and terrain enhancing capability of BISim’s new engine, VBS Blue. And, importantly, is our first step towards a full cloud-enabled desktop training product.”
BISim expects VBS4 to be feature-complete by mid-2020 with additional enhancements including animation and physics upgrade, backwards compatibility with VBS3 missions and terrains, and a new workflow for easier creation and configuration of 3D models.
Alongside the VBS4 announcement, the company has revealed significant growth over the past 12 months, hiring over 40 new staff globally as well as seeing the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army acquire BISim licenses, maintenance and/or development services, the Netherlands’ military renew its VBS3 license and so did the Australian Army.
“The key to BISim’s momentum is expansion in our product range together with top-class service — from our flagship products VBS3 and VBS Blue IG to state-of-the-art technologies in the areas of AI, terrain data prep, terrain serving, software development kits and VR/AR/MR, we provide a complete platform for system integrators and military organizations to meet the latest training requirements,” adds Alexion.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of BISim and other military uses case of VR and AR, reporting back with the latest announcements.