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MAK ONE Applications Release Announcement: VR-Forces 5.1, VR-Vantage 3.1, VR-Engage 2.1

14 Jun 2024

This major feature release introduces significant improvements to the MAK ONE Applications: VR-Vantage 1.3, VR-Forces 5.1, and VR-Engage 2.1.

Because the MAK ONE Applications are built as layers — with capabilities added as you progress up the technology stack — improvements and new features added to VR-Vantage are also included in VR-Forces and VR-Engage. And the simulation engine capabilities of VR-Forces are likewise included in VR-Engage.

So whether you use the applications individually to fill a specific role in your simulation architecture, or together to create a comprehensive and correlated synthetic environment, you’ll experience a richer and more realistic virtual world, improved visualization, increased interactivity, more informative graphics, higher simulation fidelity and, of course, our continued focus on interoperability.

VR-Vantage 3.1: MAK ONE Image Generation & Battlefield Visualizatio

Let's start with the VR-Vantage 3.1 release to highlight the visual features that show up in all three products.

A Richer Synthetic Environment: This release continues to fill the MAK ONE synthetic environment with even more richness, including:

Procedural Vegetation: We’ve significantly upgraded the MAK Earth Terrain Engine to make the world more accurately reflect the biodiversity of planet Earth, featuring incredible richness of detail making MAK ONE an even better digital twin of planet Earth. (The MAK Earth Terrain Engine already did a great job of procedural imagery including buildings and roads - now it has the vegetation and biodiversity to match!)

Dynamic Terrain: We’ve added in more simulation capabilities that allow planet Earth to change based on activity within the simulation. Some of these dynamic terrain updates include the addition of runway craters and ditches and berms, as well as the ability to destroy procedurally generated buildings.

Improved Visualization and Understanding of the Virtual World: This release introduces updates across tactical graphics, visual architecture, realism, and visual models, ensuring a more intuitive user experience with improved stability and performance, which helps our customers better visualize and understand their worlds.

A Continued Focus on Interoperability: MAK is fully committed to open standards, open APIs, and open systems. Of the many interoperability updates coming to this release of MAK ONE, we've most notably added native support for the NATO NETN FOM, including METOC support.

VR-Vantage 3.1 Highlights

Terrain

We’ve significantly upgraded the procedural vegetation abilities of the MAK Earth Terrain Engine to make the world more accurately reflect the biodiversity of planet Earth, featuring incredible richness of detail.
Improved support of CDB terrains for better performance and the ability to add procedural vegetation to enrich the terrain in real-time.
Added the ability to change the texture applied to 3D models. This allows a single model to have different appearances, which helps to manage runtime performance by not having to duplicate geometry for models that only vary by paint scheme.

Lights

Added visual support for air refueling platforms to control hose and drogue lights.
Added support for land platforms to control turn indicator lights as well as emergency lights.
Added more maritime light types.
Horizon bars on surface vessels can now articulate such that they mimic the horizon of the world when the vessel rocks on the ocean surface.

Informative Graphics

Improved Tactical Graphics for 2d and 3d exaggerated reality (XR)
Improved 2D map views (Plan View) help see tactical graphics and other overlay information more clearly.
The new Grid Line Selector toolbar allows you to rapidly toggle between grid line overlays, eg GARS, MGRS, etc.
Overhauled labels, giving you more control of how the present entity information in your 2dD and 3D views.
Height lines display below route tactical graphics and entity track histories, to visually connect 3D lines to the terrain below.

VR-Forces 5.1: MAK ONE Multi-Domain Computer Generated Forces

All of the exciting new features and enhancements outlined for VR-Vantage 3.1 above are also included in VR-Forces 5.1. Learn about all the VR-Forces-specific updates below and dive into the release notes for the comprehensive list!

A Richer Synthetic Environment with Pattern of Life: The background activity around us makes the world feel more alive and look more realistic. This release also has even more background activity to fill in planet Earth - this includes clutter ships and clutter air traffic over wide areas – driven from recorded real-world AIS and ADS-B data. Clutter aircraft have IFF transponders to stimulate electronic warfare (EW) systems.

Increased Simulation Fidelity: We’ve increased simulation fidelity in this release of MAK ONE by adding new simulation models, giving you more control over scenario planning and more control over aspects of the environment. This makes it easier and less expensive to replicate your operational environment.

VR-Forces 5.1 Highlights

	Richer Environment New Air and Shipping Clutter Areas instantly fill your world with realistic, data-driven background clutter. Clutter entities have ITT transponders to stimulate electronic warfare (EW) systems. Procedurally generated Runways and Buildings are now destroyable. New Loiter Munition systems have been added. New terrain simulation effects allow you to create berms, ditches, and tank scrapes interactively that are shared across the federation. Hundreds more models have been added.
	Increased Simulation Fidelity IFF Mode 5 interactive mode (ability to interrogate or be interrogated). Including support for Lethal Interrogation. Vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) is now simulated. New loiter munitions are added to the simulation model set. Subsurface missile launch is modeled. Vehicles handle blocked roads and turns better. Human characters can walk one way while looking/shooting in another direction.
	Improved Visualization & Control Simplified Entity Creation. Control labels and display for each model set, 2D and 3D. Multiple Entity Control Panels let users command multiple aircraft at the same time. Aggregate-level simulation objects now visualize movement tasks
	Continued Focus on Interoperability VR-Forces has long used the RPR-FOM to communicate entity states and interactions both internally and externally through HLA. With this release, we have embraced the NETN FOM as a superset of RPR-FOM. This commitment to NETN allows us to represent the weather, for example, using the METOC FOM extension. This approach maintains interoperability with other federates using pure RPR FOM and exposes data structures that were previously private within VR-Forces.

VR-Engage 2.1: MAK ONE Multi-Domain Multi-Role Virtual Simulator

Many of the exciting new features and enhancements outlined for VR-Vantage 3.1 and VR-Forces 5.1 above are also included in VR-Engage 2.1. Have a look at the VR-Engage-specific updates below and dive into the release notes for the comprehensive list!

VR-Engage 2.1 Highlights

First-Person Interaction

New controllable entities include Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV), ASLAV-25, FV 510 .Warrior, FV4034 Challenger 2 MBT, M1028 FMTV Canvas Cargo Truck w/trailer, MRAP M-ATV, F-35A Lightning II, F-35B Lightning II, F-35C Lightning II.
Added a Gunner role to the Technical Truck, allowing players to fire the bed-mounted gun.
The tripod-mounted Javelin has been updated to function in the same manner as the shoulder-mounted one.

Simulation Fidelity

Lasing now takes line of sight and range into account when looking at the specified
location. If blocked by terrain, the designator spot is at the blocked point. If the
target is beyond the range of the laser designator, the spot does not display.
Aircraft control surfaces are updated and published.

Visual Information

Improved support and control of VR Headsets (Varjo, XTAL, Vive, Oculus, …)
Dynamic terrain is now enabled by default in VR-Engage. If a dynamic terrain event causes a change to part of the terrain, such as an explosion that creates a crater, that affects entities' ability to move through that area.
When you choose to Create a New Entity, the unit of measurement for the altitude now matches the Displays Units Settings.
When someone participates in a scenario as a spectator, the text "SPECTATOR" now displays at the bottom of the window while the scenario is running to indicate that they are not actively playing.

Last but not least!

Each application now checks whether your graphics card driver version changes — either to an older or newer driver — and automatically removes cached shaders from the directory. This prevents a binary compatibility error where the cached data would become invalid due to the changed driver.

MAK ONE Applications Release Announcement: VR-Forces 5.1, VR-Vantage 3.1, VR-Engage 2.1

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