All simulations take place somewhere on terrain or in the sea or atmosphere, amidst natural and man-made structures. The action takes place at a particular time of day and season of the year. These descriptors of the when and where of a simulation are not simply visual effects, but in a constructive or virtual world they provide a real context for the behaviors of humans, vehicles, sensors, communications and weapons. This tutorial is intended to introduce the simulation user and developer to the fine art of creating the environmental playground for a simulation. The tutorial will cover the land, atmosphere and the ocean, citing sources for data and the problems that typically exist in the original source data as well as those that inevitably result from combining information from a variety of diverse sources. The difference between geo-specific and geo-typical will be discussed and why one is chosen over the other. The issues of correlation will be illustrated within a single domain (just land features), across different simulations, and across domains (correlating land, sea, and air). The tutorial illustrates how the environment and its changes affect simulated entities – vehicles and sensors in particular. Finally, the tutorial shows how a dynamic environment can be developed and provided to the simulation. As part of the discussion, the tutorial will direct attention to the DoD-provided sources for creating a reasonably correlated synthetic environment and the emerging international standards for representing environmental data. The effects of the environment span not only the domains of land, sea, and air, but electromagnetics, space and cyber by way of communications effects.
Tutorial
Putting the When and Where into Simulations
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