Category: BISim

Posted on

BISim’s Latest Military Grade Simulator VBS4 Renders Entire Planet for Training Purposes

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.

BISim vbs3 header mobile

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 vbs3 in action

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.

Posted on

Military Simulation Specialist BISim Awarded £1m Contract by British Army for VR Training Programme

Consumer virtual reality (VR) technology may only be a few years old but various militaries have been using the technology for decades as a means of training. This week, Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim), a developer of military simulation and training software announced that the British Army has awarded the company a £1 million GBP contract to conduct a pilot programme aimed at showcasing VR’s training potential.

BiSim inVR

Awarded through the £800m Defence Innovation Fund, the contract is part of the VR In-Land Training (VRLT) Pilot Programme, a British Army Collective Training Transformation Programme (CTTP) initiative which wants to examine how VR can be used for land warfare training alongside other simulations.

BISim will showcase VR’s potential through a series of events using its in-house Virtual Battlespace 3 (VCS3) software, VBS Blue IG, the company’s whole-earth image generation software, and VBS STE, a prototype whole-earth desktop trainer.

“With BISim‘s strengths in virtual simulation, image generation, and VR, its knowledge of the British Army and defence domain, and its key role in the U.S. Army’s STE (Synthetic Training Environment) programme, we are very well placed to work with the British Army to deliver VRLT and ensure that, should the technology show promise, it can be introduced coherently with other training and simulation systems,” said Rusty Orwin, BISim’s UK Head of Sales in a statement. “We’re also pleased to work together with Cervus, a company that has considerable experience in data analysis and training event design and assessment through their national and international work, including the Army and Niteworks.”

The pilot will test specific VR applications including:

  • High Resolution VR Headsets to improve environmental immersion.
  • Mixed Reality which will allow soldiers to see and interact with physical objects.
  • Avatar customisation replicating realistic facial features and body shapes allowing users to recognise their fellow soldiers.
  • After-Action Review Enhancement which provides data capture and analysis so that soldiers can better understand their own performance.

“The Army has a reputation for world class training which prepares our people for demanding and complex operations. Our training continually develops and so we constantly look for the best technology to make it as effective as possible,” said Army Head of Training Capability, Brigadier Bobby Walton-Knight CBE. “Innovations such as Virtual Reality offer immersive and flexible training, and this pilot is pushing the boundaries to explore how we might make best use of it.”

It’s not just the British and US military employing VR, last year VRFocus reported on China developing its own system called Intelligent Commando VR Training System. As further military use cases for VR are revealed, VRFocus will keep you updated.