Amphibious operations in a virtual environment

• Main Author: Le Goff, Didier A
• Other Authors: Zyda, Michael J.
• Language: English
• Published: Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School 2012
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10945/7873

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited === More than 80 percent of recent, real world, naval operations have taken place in the littoral; over half have employed amphibious units. However, up till now, no simulation developed at the Naval Postgraduate School had the capability to exercise any type of naval amphibious operation. Previous simulations lacked the necessary amphibious ship and landing craft models. Second, a method for nesting mounted entities did not exist. The approach taken was to develop a general algorithm for dynamically mounting, unmounting and nesting entities. Secondly, amphibious ship and landing craft models were developed incorporating a simple hydrodynamic models for use with the LPD-17 and Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) vehicles. Finally, real time collision detection was implemented to ensure realistic interaction between all entities. The result is a stand alone, 3-D, virtual environment (VE) which simulates landing craft embarkation operations between a mother ship (LPD-17 class) and an LCAC, and allows embarked entities to walk through the 50,000 polygon LPD model in real time (7-15 frames per second). The simulation is further enhanced by realistic wave response, based on the Pierson-Moskowitz spectrum, by all ocean borne vehicles. Lastly, the use of the high level EasyScene 3.0 API allowed the application to be written in approximately 30 percent few lines of code than otherwise possible