Modular technology: a methodology for the creation of virtual environments in terrain driving simulators

This paper presents the latest research and developments in Modular Technology, a constructive methodology designed to create the environments of the virtual driving simulators of CITEF. Modular Technology discretizes the scene into a finite number of modules or portions of the environment, which after being instantiated and subjected to a series of geometric transformations using shaders, are meticulously assembled to reproduce the virtual scene. This tiling system has a set of particularities that make it different from the rest of tiling systems used up to now. These particularities are designed to get the maximum benefit of these type of virtual representations and can be summarized in four points: the shape of the module; the way in which the family is defined; the positioning system of these modules; and the deformation of these modules using shaders. In this way a substantial reduction in the number of geographical entities in the environment can be attained and an increase in the diversity and flexibility of the environment. There are many advantages to be had from this form of generation: savings in scene size, loading times and resource requirements, greater flexibility and clarity of the scene graph and a more substantial upgrade capacity of the nvironment. has a set of particularities that make it different from the rest of tiling systems used up to now. These particularities are designed to get the maximum benefit of these type of virtual representations and can be summarized in four points: the shape of the module; the way in which the family is defined; the positioning system of these modules; and the deformation of these modules using shaders. In this way a substantial reduction in the number of geographical entities in the environment can be attained and an increase in the diversity and flexibility of the environment. There are many advantages to be had from this form of generation: savings in scene size, loading times and resource requirements, greater flexibility and clarity of the scene graph and a more substantial upgrade capacity of the environment

The President's Address

This paper presents the latest research and developments in Modular Technology. That is, the optimized repetition of the same geometry or module, for the generation of large virtual environments for the simulators that are designed by CITEF. The current trend is on redirecting the maximum possible share of graphical calculation to the GPU to lighten the load of the CPU as far as possible, as this is slower and less suitable for graphic calculation. Modular Technology, which has been successfully used for some time in driving training simulators, is particularly suitable for the implementation of operations in the GPU through programming shaders. In this way a substantial reduction in the number of geographical entities in the environment can be attained and an increase in the diversity and flexibility of the environment. This is achieved by discretizing the environment into a series of instantiated modules and using shaders in an appropriate manner based only on a few parameters. There are many advantages to be had from this form of generation: savings in scene size, loading times and resource requirements, greater flexibility and clarity of the scene graph and a more substantial upgrade capacity of the environment