Development of any new simulation system takes considerable time and resources. Often these systems will use an existing simulation as a basis, but there is still a large learning curve for developers to build upon and extend that simulation.

In the mid-1990s, the commercial game industry made a shift away from developing new games from "scratch?, and toward reusable game engines. Game engines are developed specifically to assist in creating new games of some particular genre. The Enhanced Dynamic Geo-social Environment (EDGE) program, developed for the Army, utilized a commercial game engine as well as more traditional simulation and game industry standards to produce a training platform that was available for use within two months. The system was then hardened and released in less than six months with a small development team. By utilizing systems built for the commercial world, Department of Defense benefits from the economies of scale produced by the game industry.

The Authors of this paper will describe the process taken and the lessons they learned as the EDGE program developed from an idea into a successful program capable of release and use by external users within six months. The paper includes a discussion on how the commercial game engine and standard third party tools were used to improve the efficiency and quality of the final product.