Enhanced Virtual Presence for Immersive Visualization of Complex Situations for Mission Rehearsal

As the military rethinks its doctrine to significantly include the importance of information, new technologies that reflect this thinking must be studied and developed. The primary concern of this study is to identify requirements for a virtual reality system that will facilitate the management of, and training for, complex missions and situations by providing an immersive, interactive, multidimensional model of the significant concrete and abstract characteristics of the situation. In addition, to develop system specifications for a prototype system and to identify commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software required, including databases and models. It would meet the needs of at least one military and one non-military application, and have the capability to realistically model the physical environment and other significant factors (e.g. 3D data files, terrain maps, texture maps, video, text), including change over time, viewpoint control, simulation control (e.g. freeze, playback, what-if scenarios, etc.). When applied to the Army's planning and command infrastructure it is expected that mission efficiency and robustness will improve as the result of improved training and management.