SERIOUS SIMULATIONS WINS TRACKING SUBCONTRACT FOR THE U.S. ARMY’S VIRTUAL CLEARANCE TRAINING SYSTEM
ORLANDO, Florida, USA – Serious Simulations LLC announced today that it has begun work for FAAC Incorporated, the prime contractor for the U.S. Army’s Virtual Clearance Training System (VCTS). The subcontract was awarded as part of an overall upgrade package to the Army’s VCTS program being executed by FAAC. The VCTS program is administered by the Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation (PEOSTRI).
Serious Simulations will provide a unique gun tracking solution to the fleet of simulators in the VCTS program. Specifically, the company developed a Zero Drift Machine Gun tracking system to enable machine gunnery tasks to be executed with extremely high degrees of accuracy and zero drift (drift is an issue whereby the virtual machine gun begins to move itself, or “drift”, virtually, without any physical movement or stimulus, necessitating recalibrations during training. The drift issue is not uncommon in simulators, and is propagated by a variety of sensor technologies and environmental conditions).
“We were glad to provide the Army with a solid solution for a vexing problem, so that soldiers will be uninterrupted by simulator drift issues and can be more fully immersed in their combat training”, said Christopher Chambers, a former Army officer and CEO of Serious Simulations. “In this project, we also decided to track deflection and elevation of the gun mount, rather than the gun itself, thereby making weapon change-outs realistic and simple, with no impact on tracking sensors.”
The tracking solution is a unique innovation by Serious Simulations and FAAC Incorporated, using industrial grade optical encoders, engaged by a series of gears to track machine gun movements and send the data into the virtual simulation. Because the system requires physical movement to initiate the sensors, there is absolutely zero drift possible. The encoders measure gun movement to an accuracy of less than 1/100th of a degree, even exceeding the accuracy of the gun itself.
The current subcontract with FAAC for the US Army VCTS program follows on the heels of two tracker prototyping subcontracts for both gun and head tracking improvements in the VCTS program.
Serious Simulations prides itself on innovative solutions oriented on improving realism in simulators. In addition to its new machine gun tracking device, the young company has spent nearly two years since its incorporation building a large portfolio of innovations and inventions for individual and group simulation. The company created several cutting edge technologies and applications for its first product, an Infantry simulation system branded ready2trainTM. It currently holds a portfolio of five patents in simulation and Virtual Reality technologies. Two patents were filed in the last year in the vital area of zero latency wireless video transmission for Virtual and Augmented Reality displays, intended for both professional training and entertainment applications. The patented wireless devices are already being embedded in the HMDs of four manufacturers, in the few months since their debut.
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