The New Army 3D World Standard

Bottom Line Up Front: The US Army is establishing a common 3D standard for creating terrain and objects.

The New Standard

The US Army is not new to 3D training environments, they’ve been doing it for decades! Unfortunately, all their software is also decades out of date. To fix this, the Army has established the Army Futures Command Synthetic Training Environment Cross Functional Team, which is in charge of making sure all future 3D simulators are compatible, plug-and-play, can be used with the IVAS headsets, and is generally easy to integrate all vendors. Working alongside them is the Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation (PEO STRI).

The Various Pieces

At the top level there is the Synthetic Training Environment. That overall umbrella is in charge of the entire standard. At the time of this writing, it had four sub-parts.

1. One World Terrain, which is in charge of creating a 3D standard for the whole surface of the earth.
2. Common Synthetic Environment comprised of the Live, Virtual, Constructive-Integrating Architecture and the Training Simulation Management Tool.
3. The Medical Simulation Training Center.
4. Constructive Simulation Support made up of Battle Command Training Capability – Equipment Support, Joint Land Component Constructive Training Capability, and One Semi-Automated Forces.

The New 3D Standard

The bottom line is this: from now on, if you are going to create 3D products for the military, you’ll have to follow the standard they are creating. In the past, every vendor used whatever 3D standard they wanted, but not anymore. In the future, every vendor will have to use the Synthetic Training Environment standard.