Providing training for lifeboat operators is a complex task, and potentially life-saving. Because lifeboats are often used in treacherous conditions with lives at stake, careful and rigorous preparation is essential. To provide this critical training, the development team at Virtual Marine Technology (VMT), located in St. John’s Newfoundland, leveraged Presagis solutions to create the SurvivalQuest Simulator.
Two main challenges must be taken into consideration when developing training for lifeboat operators. The first is the fact that conducting training rehearsal in real-world situations can be life threatening. Allowing inexperienced trainees to operate lifeboats in harsh marine conditions can have disastrous consequences.
In an effort to keep both instructors and trainees safe, live training is often limited to calmer weather and environments which do not always adequately replicate emergency response scenarios. As a result, lifeboat operators are put to sea without ever having experienced or prepared for the actual conditions encountered during rescue missions.
In order to better prepare trainees for all environments and conditions, virtual lifeboat training applications have been developed as an alternative to the traditional approach. The clear advantage of providing training through simulated scenarios is that instructors can safely immerse trainees in any number of the extreme conditions that they will likely encounter in the lifeboats. However, this can raise a second challenge.
Developing a scenario for lifeboat rescue involves creating the hydrodynamic models required to accurately represent the performance of lifeboats in high sea states. In order to accurately depict the motion of a lifeboat in a variety of wave situations, lifeboat training scenarios require a level of mathematical complexity not found in flight or large ship simulations.
To be effective, virtual training applications must include realistic environments and provide real-time image generation and updates. Through effective training, VMT’s SurvivalQuest mitigates the risks to lifeboat operators in all stages of their career. Captain Anthony Patterson, President and CEO of VMT, explains “SurvivalQuest was designed to address the gap between training and real-world scenarios by enabling operators to practice lifeboat launching in a safe, simulated environment.”
To develop this safe training environment, the team at VMT worked with Presagis Creator, Vega Prime, and Vega Prime Marine to create a simulation that provides a high-fidelity and truly immersive virtual lifeboat application.
Developing Realistic Marine Environments with Vega Prime Marine
During the development of SurvivalQuest, two critical components of the simulation were prioritized; creating a realistic visual environment, and developing high-fidelity wave and ship motions. Explains Patterson, “a major challenge in the development of SurvivalQuest was accurately modeling the hydrodynamic properties of small vessel motion in variable sea states.”
The team at VMT employed Vega Prime Marine to meet these challenges and to provide immersive training environments. Patterson explains that, “Vega Prime Marine gave us an out-of-the-box virtual wave environment that required little or no development to give us a visually believable marine environment. Through the motion of the numerical wave models and the appearance with lighting, shaders, and white crests, this software solution provides us with a platform requiring few modifications for creating immersive environments for lifeboat operations.”
Vega Prime Marine allows simulation developers to create water surfaces for realistic oceans, lakes, and coastlines in real-time 3D visual applications. By combining the realism of an accurately synthesized dynamic ocean surface with the performance required for interactive real-time 3D visual simulation and training, Vega Prime Marine provides the necessary capabilities to realistically simulate ocean surfaces and the vessels that interact with them.
With high-fidelity wave models provided natively in the toolkit, allowing users to control the state of the sea, including the distribution of the direction, height, wavelength, and alignment of the wind, Vega Prime Marine enables developers to rapidly add realistic dynamic water surfaces for any visual application.
Drawing on both his experience with the SurvivalQuest simulator, as well as his work on other projects, Patterson sites “the ease-of-integration into the SurvivalQuest simulator, the appearance of the wave model, and the special effects capabilities” as the top three features in Vega Prime Marine.
Selecting Presagis Solutions at VMT
VMT made the decision to employ Vega Prime and Vega Prime Marine on the SurvivalQuest project at the end of a considerable evaluation process, which began by testing several image generation software alternatives. According to Patterson, the team initially “evaluated the products based on ease-of-use and the ability to integrate with simulator systems.” During the SurvivalQuest prototype development phase, the team was pleased by how quickly they could understand and benefit from the tools in Creator, Vega Prime, and Vega Prime Marine and start the development of their training system. Explains Patterson, “As we became more familiar with simulation design and the available software alternatives, we also evaluated the quality of the image generation, the real-time performance, and stability of the software. The Vega Prime and Vega Prime Marine tools remained at the top of our list.”
As they moved further into development, VMT began to thoroughly appreciate the features and advanced capabilities in Vega Prime and Vega Prime Marine. Now, says Patterson, “Presagis is VMT’s supplier of image generation software for the SurvivalQuest Full Mission Simulator as well as its Desktop simulator commercial system. In addition, Presagis products are also being used in our ongoing R&D programs aimed at building upon the capabilities of our simulators. Currently, we are focusing on how to take increasing advantage of the features in Vega Prime and Vega Prime Marine to enhance our small craft simulator products.”
