National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) - Tactical Research

The National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) of The Netherlands is an independent technological institute that carries out applied flight research simulations for the aviation and space sectors.  Its clients include national and international governments, large and small industries, and aerospace organizations.  NLR is a non-profit institute that has several specialized research facilities including its new Fighter 4-Ship.

The Fighter 4-Ship is the evolution of one of NLR's existing facilities, the Generic Fighter Operations Research Cockpit Environment (GFORCE).  GFORCE provides high-end simulations in an extremely realistic cockpit environment and was developed with an emphasis on elaborate human factors and training experimentation.  The Fighter 4-Ship combines this full-mission simulator with mock-up derivatives.

As a result of this evolution, NLR has a research facility that, by allowing up to four fighter pilots to carry out joint missions in a virtual environment, can simulate collective tactical operations.  Focusing on interoperability and re-configurability, the Fighter 4-Ship enables research on fast-jet team operations and large-scale collective, combined, and/or joint operations.  And, like the GFORCE, the Fighter 4-Ship is not a training facility but a research facility, so it is able to validate new technologies as well as the best possible training methods for tactical operations.

Then NLR began designing the Fighter 4-Ship, they had specific criteria regarding the flexibility, cost, and portability of the facility.  According to Michel Keuning, Senior Scientist at NLR "We wanted to keep the facility low-cost and mobile, which are both very important factors for conducting our research."  

To meet these criteria, NLR employs Presagis Terra Vista for terrain creation and Presagis Vega Prime for sensor modules.  In addition, they also use SIM OneNet to link different simulations that use different communication protocols and Presagis Simulation technology to create scenarios for their applications.

Presagis Solutions -Terra Vista

NLR uses only one computer for terrain-generation.  Although it is not part of their core business, the team feels that the ability to create their own databases is a key component to their flexibility.  As a research-based facility, NLR often has to adapt their terrain to fit the goals of any project.  This would be either impossible or too expensive to achieve with a purchased database.  Instead, NLR develops their databases in-house using Terra Vista so that they can optimize them for each project.

Terra Vista provides NLR with the flexibility to adapt their database to the specific needs of their end-users.  Because of its rule-based construction methods, an easy-to-use GUI, template-based animation parametric modeling techniques, and an expert system-assisted configuration, Terra Vista makes it possible for NLR to rapidly construct terrain databases for all of their Modeling & Simulation applications.  

Since the Fighter 4-Ship is a flight simulator, the team has to build databases that are several hundred kilometers in height and width.  According to Arno Gerretsen, R&D engineer  at NLR, "Our databases have to provide a few hundred kilometers of terrain for the aircraft to cover-about 600x800 kms of terrain.  Of course, not all the areas in the database have to have the same level of detail, so, depending on a project's requirements, we have to create higher and lower resolutions for given areas."

In addition to helping the team at NLR rapidly construct their databases, Terra Vista also  helps them to achieve even greater time and cost savings by allowing them to re-use existing data. Explains Gerretsen, "We are able to either reuse a database that we developed previously or to generate or extend an existing one."  What's more, it gives them even greater flexibility to meet the needs of their clients worldwide because it supports the highest number of terrain format exports.

Other Presagis Solutions -Vega Prime and SIM OneNet

For their out-of-the-window and sensor simulations, NLR made the decision to go with Vega Prime since they had considerable experience with it in their civil (two-person cockpit) full-motion flight simulator.  Explains Keuning, "We were already using Vega Prime in our Generic Research Aircraft Cockpit Environment (GRACE) simulator, so using it for the Fighter 4-Ship was not a big risk.  What was new for us were the sensor module extensions.  With the Fighter 4-Ship, we wanted to get better sensor simulations-specifically infrared simulations-and decided to stay with Vega Prime."  

Vega Prime helps the team at NLR to develop high performance applications.  It features a cross-platform, scalable environment and provides the framework necessary to configure, create, and deploy advanced simulation applications. Using Vega Prime, the Fighter 4-Ship runs up to 6 out-of-the-window channels and between 4 and 8 sensor channels. 

Additionally, with the Infrared module or IR Scene in Vega Prime, the team at NLR can compute the apparent radiance of a scene from the position and orientation of the observer and achieve high fidelity sensor simulations for the Fighter 4-Ship.

The Fighter 4-Ship was also designed to investigate issues of interoperability.  Says Keuning, "The ability to interoperate has always been important for the Fighter 4-Ship facility.  In fact, the whole idea of the facility is to look at interoperations."  Each of the four cockpits in the Fighter 4-Ship accommodates a pilot who operates their virtual aircraft using a touch screen.  With its ability to simulate a complete mission cycle-including planning, briefing, and debriefing-the Fighter 4-Ship allows NLR to study the collaboration and interaction among pilots as well as the interaction of weapons and sensor systems with other entities and the environment. 

To further enhance the facility's level of interoperability, NLR uses SIM OneNet from Presagis to create the appropriate gateway between DIS simulations and the HLA applications that they are currently running.  In addition, SIM OneNet also enables monitoring of the interoperability between different systems.

Collective Mission Simulation

NLR's main objective in building the Fighter 4-Ship was to provide a military facility that was suited to conducting research on technical aspects of distributed mission simulations and on aspects of training and operator performance involving team coordination.  Keuning explains, "Because the Fighter 4-Ship brings together four separate simulators, it is ideal for conducting tactical operations research.  For example, the facility allows us to conduct research on how to use simulations in future curricula, on how to make better use of training materials, and on how to make use of new technologies." 

Currently, the facility is running a project called Collective Mission Simulation.  Says Keuning, "The goal of the Collective Mission Simulation project is to find more effective and efficient ways to couple simulators of different generations and types.  We are using the Fighter 4-Ship to look at simulation technology and at ways of connecting simulators together."

To meet its objectives of flexibility, cost, and portability, NLR uses several Presagis solutions.  Like so many in the industry, they rely on a number of different companies for their COTS products.  Now, with the arrival of Presagis, companies like NLR get their products, services, and support for their modeling and simulation applications from less sources.  Says Keuning, "Looking back, we were dealing with 3 companies that merged into one.  This new company can be a real benefit for us, particularly as their products become more streamlined and integrated with one another."  And Presagis is about to increase their ability to streamline and integrate software exponentially.