Littoral Environment Visualization Tool

The U.S. Navy would benefit greatly from a tool that could produce realistic scenes of the littoral environment based upon standard meteorological and oceanographic inputs in near real time; simulate a wide range of sensors aboard platforms above, below, or on the ocean surface; and allow the user to manipulate environmental inputs and immediately view their effects on the scene. The goal of this SBIR program is to develop a Littoral Environment Visualization Tool (LEVT) that provides all these capabilities. Arete's state-of-the-art software tools, already in widespread use across the film, video gaming, and advertising industries as well as in military applications, are capable of generating open ocean scenes of breathtaking realism. In this SBIR program, Arete will extend these capabilities to the littoral environment by simulating phenomena such as wave breaking and nonlinear wave propagation. These inherently nonlinear effects are difficult to compute in a near real time application. Arete is prepared to meet this challenge using an approach that balances the requirements for visual realism, interactivity, and near real time results.