Major Feature Release Incorporates Host of Performance Improvements
VT MAK has released VR-Vantage 2.5 – a major feature release that incorporates significant improvements to the platform, the company announced on 6 May.
With an emphasis on performance – maintaining smooth scenes at high frame-rates even as demands for greater scene complexity and richness increase – and overall visual experience, the improvements include:
Performance
• Greatly improved caching scheme for streaming and Common Database (CDB) terrains, allowing for significantly faster reloads and faster paging;
• Improved entity model preloading, to avoid noticeable performance impact from adding new entities;
Human Characters
• DI Guy characters can enter and exit vehicles for realistic ISR visualisation;
• A new near/far clipping policy to prevent anomalies when using view magnification;
Weather
• Ability to configure individual cloud layers from an easy-to-use GUI;
• The software will listen to and display individual cloud layers from VR-Forces;
New CIGI Controls and APIs
• Better control of VR-Vantage observer and level of detail;
• Terrains can be opened and closed using ‘view control’ messages;
Better Visuals
• Particle systems support for effects textures make smoke and flames more realistic;
• CameraFX provides more realistic terrain/entity views in infrared or night vision goggle scenarios;
• Volumetric clouds appear more realistic when intersecting with terrain.
As well as now being easier to use, the new release for VR-Vantage includes an updated SensorFX plug-in for sensor emulation that addresses compatibility issues and bug fixes.