ORLANDO, Fla. — Rockwell Collins is preparing to release a new global synthetic environment for simulated training that provides a representation of any part of the world at all times of day or night, in different wavelengths, during different seasons and at any altitude.
Plans to release the first version that covers the entire geographic representation of the United States is expected in May 2016, and the company already has two international customers in the Asian theater committed to buying the data, according to Lance Moss, the company's principal product manager for simulation and training solutions. Rockwell Collins will then update its database with geographic representations of other regions around the globe in two releases per year
The company developed its first WholeEarth database 15 years ago and unveiled how it's bringing that technology "to an entirely new level" on Dec. 1 today at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education (ITSEC) conference here.
"The reason this is innovative is it gives ready-made content in all of the wavelengths plus all the times of day, plus two seasons (summer and winter) at a small size and a relatively small cost compared to building your own data," Moss said.
"We've seen high resolution data insets being built for customers cost upwards of $4 million and this cost is nowhere near that," he added. The Rockwell Collins solution is expected to cost less than $10,000 a year in annual maintenance, for exampleinstance.
While other systems that offer world-wide geo-imagery are about 10 to 20 terabytes in size, the new WholeEarth comes in at just under two terabytes, which makes it easy to distribute to customers, Moss said.
Providing geo-specific imagery with "geo-typical" 3D content at a 0.5m resolution leads to a "quite believable and quite compelling" environment for training on all flight platforms and applications, Moss noted.
The WholeEarth synthetic environment is considered an "out of the box" training product that quickly provides the visual imagery data needed and therefore reduces training time as well, according to Moss.
The product will be available for both military and commercial applications, he added.
Email: jjudson@defensenews.com
Twitter: @JenJudson
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
More In Training & Sim
