Personal Computer (PC) Graphics Support for Texel Level Sensor Simulation

"As the military relies more and more on advanced sensors to deploy its weapons and execute missions, the importance of realistically simulating these sensors in training has increased. Recognizing that trainers need to include the physics required to makethe exercise and scientific data as accurate and realistic as possible, but faced with reduced budgets, the U.S. Government is looking to recent advances made in commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) graphics technology. Public demands for more realism from thegaming industry has led to low-cost COTS technology having graphics capabilities that rival those of the highest priced graphics workstations. Current COTS graphics hardware offers low-cost, yet realistic training opportunities for Government agencies.However, their inability to represent the physics of the sensors that our military is heavily dependent upon, keeps them as-is from being the solution to this training dilemma. It is the objective of this Phase I effort to investigate and formulate aplan for advancing current COTS graphics hardware to incorporate several of the most important high-end sensor graphics capabilities, while keeping the price down to a fraction of the proprietary systems cost. This Phase I effort will demonstrate thefeasibility of advancing the physics implemented in real-time simulations by developing or modifying a PC video card to incorporate dynamic texture indexing and three independent spline fog