Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation & Education Conference (I/ITSEC) - Orlando, FL. -  MultiGen-Paradigm®, Inc., a leading provider of realtime 3D visual simulation software, was granted a United States Patent (number 6,924,814) for its Virtual Texture technology. The MultiGen-Paradigm Virtual Texture technology delivers increased realism and cost effectiveness to visual simulation applications by delivering a method to visualize large geographical areas with geo-specific satellite imagery at realtime, interactive frame rates on low-cost PC hardware.

"The difficulty with large-area geo-specific visualization is the gigabytes of image data that is used by the visualization by far exceeds available computer memory and video resources," said Sandeep Divekar, President/CEO at MultiGen-Paradigm. "The Virtual Texture technology is an innovative solution to this problem and represents the kind of leading edge innovation that the vis-sim industry has come to expect from MultiGen-Paradigm and is part of our strategy to deliver the best possible technology packaged in a cost effective manner to meet our customers' needs."

Virtual Texture allows users to tradeoff computer resources for improved image quality via flexible and user-friendly configuration mechanisms. Virtual Textures are easily integrated with cutting-edge visualization techniques, such as multi-texturing, vertex and fragment shaders, and vendor-specific texturing extensions such as detail texture. This capability delivers superior image quality by enabling users to integrate geo-specific imagery with other resources such as normal displacement maps for improved terrain shading, multiple representations for different sensor spectral bands, thermal data for infrared simulation, and detail texture for enhancing image quality in the areas where high-resolution satellite imagery is unavailable.

The Virtual Texture technology is fully integrated with the MultiGen-Paradigm Creator Terrain Studio™ and Vega Prime™ product lines and has already been used successfully by many MultiGen-Paradigm customers. Additionally, the Virtual Texture solution is cross-platform, giving users the ability to choose the best image format for best image quality and performance on a given platform using Vega Prime.