Combat readiness training for pilots in the next decade requires realistic computer-image-generator (CIG) scenes that are correlatable to large real-world gaming areas. Major advances in hardware texture, memory, and polygon capacities by themselves are insufficient to sustain the desired increases in training effectiveness. Innovative data base technologies can leverage improvements in hardware capacity, architecture, and algorithms.

This paper describes how this synergy of software and hardware is achieved in current CIG technology. The availability of many thousands of texture maps makes possible the use of high-resolution, remotely sensed image data to create Geo-Specific texture over the entire gaming area. This textured terrain has much higher fidelity because it contains small-scale feature elements that correspond to real-world objects. Geo-Specific texture reduces the number of required ground polygons, which then permits increased density of three-dimensional polygonal features. The powerful data base compression technique of instancing, previously somewhat restricted in application mainly to terrain polygons and cultural objects, is now extended (with an enhanced hardware architecture) to the application of Geo-Specific texture with smooth shading.

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Howard Wilkerson