Simulation technology is gaining greater fidelity and venturing into new realms such as training for urban combat, counter-terrorism, and emergency responders. For these human simulation applications to mature, detailed databases of urban areas and building interiors are needed. Traditional methods for the generation of 3D environments for simulation require the use of standard NIMA products like DTED, DFAD, and VMAP, however, current detailed data for a desired location is not always available. Furthermore, simulated environments for urban areas require that building interiors be modeled as well. Current methods require building blueprints, surveys, and significant after-the-fact processing to obtain a well-correlated model, easily requiring hundreds of man-hours. This means that it is cost-prohibitive to model more than one or two specific locations for mission rehearsal, and such specific models require a tremendous lead-time. A rapid, cost-efficient method for capturing geospecific locations for simulation and mission-rehearsal is needed.

SAIC has developed the Virtual Environment Capture System (VECS), which allows for rapid generation of building interiors and immediate exterior surroundings. VECS allows the user to capture building geometry and place premodeled furniture elements from the actual environment. A typical office can be captured in detail, with geospecific textures, in less than five minutes. The system uses a laser and optical encoders to facilitate a constructive geometry approach to model the building with a minimum number of data points. The result is an optimized runtime model with a mix of geospecific and geotypical features that requires no post processing, and has both visual elements and the contextual information necessary for Semi-Automated Forces (SAF) computer reasoning over the model. This paper will describe the first year of VECS research, the system hardware and software components, the process and lessons learned from the first modeling contract to utilize VECS, and planned system enhancements.