Plugging in to the Power of VBS3

[Asid]

Plugging in to the Power of VBS3



Sultan Ansari, BISim’s Director of Engineering, is responsible for all VBS plug-in development, spanning a range of solutions that have enabled trainees to leverage VBS for a wider range of uses including customizing U.S. Army avatars with personal skills sets and bringing electronic warfare visualization to VBS.

After graduating as salutatorian from Full Sail University, Sultan went to lead development of tools, research and development, core capabilities and frameworks for various game studios and simulation companies. He joined BISim in 2011 as a lead software engineer. Sultan now leads over 30 engineers across BISim.

BISim: Tell us about some of the projects you’ve worked on.

Sultan: I started off in the video game industry as a software developer for a game called Area 51 for Playstation and Xbox and after several years moved over to simulation. In the simulation industry, I’ve worked on programs for helicopter training and constructive simulation like OneSAF. I’ve worked on sensor simulations.

Here at BISim, I’ve overseen development for a range of solutions such as VBS Avatar, VBS Chalkboard,  VBS IG, and Green Gear integration to name just a few.

BISim: What do those plugins do?

Sultan: VBS Avatar brings actual physical characteristics of players to the game. Essentially, it allows soldiers to create an avatar that matches their physical capabilities, skills and appearance to more accurately depict a realistic training exercise for each participant. It was well received by the U.S. Army. We were in direct contact with ends users and that played a major role in the success of the project. We definitely want feedback constantly. It sounds cheesy, but our focus is to make the customer happy.


AvatarVBS Avatar includes a face editor to customize player avatars

VBS Chalkboard allows users to create visual cues visible during gameplay in 2D or 3D in VBS3. It is a mission planning tool but can also be used in mission rehearsal. It’s a John Madden-esque tool to place military symbols and import GRGs (gridded reference graphics). More recently, we’ve added capabilities for sketching directly on overlay and VBS maps. One of the benefits we heard was the ability to draw the GRG manually and go into the overlay/satellite images and be able to print-screen it or save it and share for mission planning.


VBS Chalkboard for mission planning and rehearsal

Green Gear is a plugin that connects actual C2 hardware like the C2CPC and AFATDS, used for close air support missions, with VBS3 and VBS3Fires and VBS3Fires FST. It was an interesting project that challenged developers to reverse engineer communications of how our software would talk to the devices. 

BISim’s Orlando office has also been in the thick of the development for several projects that led to new products, VBS IG, of which early versions were developed for the U.S. Army’s Close Combat Tactical Trainer and our new interoperability link, VBS Gateway, which is included for free in VBS3 now provides DIS/HLA and now CIGI interoperability.

BISim: What do these plugins/projects represent about VBS and its capabilities?

Sultan: There is all this content and functionality built over the years that allow capabilities like custom rendering to macro things like controlling entities. You don’t have to focus on the basics of how to make a character move because the framework of the soldier -- running, jumping, shooting -- is there. That’s why I don’t feel comfortable saying that VBS is just a game engine. It’s an enabler, it becomes a hub.