Army Command and Control facilities need the ability to function more effectively, with smaller staffs spread over a geographically dispersed area. As communications capability, visual simulation, and virtual reality (VR) have increased in capability and decreased in cost, these technologies have made distributed virtual reality applications attractive solutions for such problems.

This project is developing a set of tools which will allow distributed users to interact with existing Army command and control systems through a virtual environment. To provide immediate familiarity for existing users, the system will use a virtual model of a standard Tactical Operations Center (TOC) as the virtual environment. The system will support multiple users, allowing prototyping, evaluation, and training to be carried out in the virtual environment by users who are geographically distributed.

This paper describes the project requirements, technical approach, system tradeoffs, current accomplishments, and future direction of the project.

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Les Elkins