SIS-ASTROS: An Integrated Simulation System for the Artillery

Saturation Rocket System (ASTROS)

Cesar T. Pozzer

1 a

, Jo

ao B. Martins

1 b

, Lisandra M. Fontoura

1 c

, Luis A. L. Silva

1 d

Mateus B. Rutzig

1 e

, Raul C. Nunes

1 f

and Edison Pignaton de Freitas

2 g

Graduate Program in Computer Science, Federal University of Santa Maria, 97105-900, Santa Maria, Brazil

Graduate Program in Computer Science, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, 91501-970, Porto Alegre, Brazil

Keywords:

Virtual Tactical Simulation, Blended Constructive-virtual Simulation, Military Simulation.

Abstract:

Simulation is a valuable technique used by the military to support personnel training. A trend in current

military training is the combination of different types of simulation in an integrated setup. Observing this

trend, the Brazilian Army is making efforts to develop integrated simulation solutions. This paper presents the

conception of an integrated simulation system of the Brazilian Army Artillery called SIS-ASTROS. Besides

the integrated setup connecting different types of simulators, a major contribution in the scope of the SIS-

ASTROS is the presentation of the virtual tactical simulator to train mid-rank ofﬁcers in activities regarding

the coordinated deployment of ASTROS artillery batteries on the battleﬁeld. This simulator not only addresses

constructive simulation aspects but also virtual ones. Due to its design, the conception of this simulator on its

own is already an important innovation. This paper presents the key components of the integrated simulation

system, highlighting the main contributions in the research and development of the virtual tactical simulator.

1 INTRODUCTION

Simulation techniques have a paramount role for

demonstration, training, and analytical tasks in the

military domain (Hill and Miller, 2017) (Smith,

2010). Computer-based simulation for military train-

ing is a key asset for users not only to enhance their

technical skills but also to collect and reﬁne military

tactical and strategic doctrine knowledge before real-

world activities. Moreover, the use of simulation-

based training can diminish the costs and risks asso-

ciated with the use of real-world equipment or mobi-

lization of a large contingent of resources and people.

In particular to the tactical training of military doc-

trine, it is important to highlight the simulation sys-

tem functionalities that provide an intermediary level

between a virtual technical simulator and a construc-

tive one (Department of Defense - DoD, 2013). Thus,

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3321-4828

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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2836-2009

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https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4655-8889

a blended simulation can be explored to train tactical

skills of mid- or low- ranked military ofﬁcers.

To the improvement of state-of-art simulation-

based military training, a collaboration between the

Brazilian Army and the Federal University of Santa

Maria - UFSM approached the research and develop-

ment of high-ﬁdelity simulation systems to provide a

qualiﬁed training experience to military personnel. A

relevant part of this effort is directed to the research

and development of the SIS-ASTROS project, which

involves an integrated simulation system architecture

for the tactical employment of batteries of the Ar-

tillery Saturation Rocket System for Area Saturation

(ASTROS) system (AVIBRAS, 2019). This simula-

tion system architecture is composed of a set of stand-

alone simulators particularly adjusted to the training

of the military personnel in the coordinate handling

of the different military vehicles that make part of

an ASTROS Battery. In this project, alternative sim-

ulation problems are approached through computer-

based training and virtual technical simulators, along

with the capacity to train higher-level tactical skills

of the battery commander in the recognition and de-

ployment of such battery units in different tactical po-

sitions in a virtual battleﬁeld terrain scenario. With

a virtual tactical simulator - the SIS-ASTROS Sim-

194

Pozzer, C., Martins, J., Fontoura, L., Silva, L., Rutzig, M., Nunes, R. and Pignaton de Freitas, E.

SIS-ASTROS: An Integrated Simulation System for the Artillery Saturation Rocket System (ASTROS).

DOI: 10.5220/0011135400003274

In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications (SIMULTECH 2022), pages 194-201

ISBN: 978-989-758-578-4; ISSN: 2184-2841

ulation System, training users can interoperate with

other kinds of simulation systems, such as construc-

tive ones, allowing the development of fully inte-

grated and enhanced simulation exercises. The major

innovation in this system is the proposal of the virtual

tactical simulator for training the military aspects re-

lated to what is called Position Recognition and Occu-

pation (PRO) activities of ASTROS Batteries, which

relates to training the skills of battery commanders in

performing tactical deployment activities.

This paper presents the SIS-ASTROS integrated

simulation system, focusing on the most impor-

tant scientiﬁc and technological contributions, mainly

concerning the conception and development of the

virtual tactical simulator.

2 BACKGROUND

2.1 Life, Virtual and Constructive

Simulations

There is a discussion among simulation users about

the ways of employing different types of military sim-

ulation systems. However, a consensus among the

practitioners in this area is that there is a clear ben-

eﬁt of using live, virtual, and constructive simulations

for military training (Department of Defense - DoD,

2013), a beneﬁt that is even augmented when these

three types are combined in joint LVC simulations

(Hodson and Hill, 2014) as investigated in this work.

Once constructive simulation handles higher lev-

els of abstraction, concerning strategic decision-

making aspects, virtual simulation is concerned about

training speciﬁc operational and tactical skills, while

live simulation comes closer the reality, training oper-

ational and “hands-on” skills (Hodson and Baldwin,

2009). Despite this LVC classiﬁcation, there are inter-

mediary zones between virtual and constructive, and

between virtual and live simulations (Meyer et al.,

2014). These intermediary zones can be explained

by the ﬂexibility of the virtual simulations, which can

present aspects closer to live simulations from one

side, or closer to constructive simulations on the other

side. Considering the ﬁrst, the use of virtual simu-

lations targets training technical or operational skills

regarding given equipment. Thus, it is possible to

call this speciﬁc application of virtual simulation as

technical-virtual simulation. The second application

of virtual simulations, closer to constructive ones, tar-

gets training not the handling of particular equipment,

but its employment concerning tactical aspects, such

as how to tactically select the best path for a vehicle

(or a convoy) to move over a given terrain. This usage

contrasts with the constructive simulation, which is

concerned with higher-level (strategic) aspects, which

completely abstracts ﬁner grain details of the speciﬁc

terrain, for instance. Thus, it is possible to name this

second ﬂavour as virtual-tactical simulation.

The virtual-tactical simulation provides a

computer-based virtual environment in which low- or

mid-level decision-makers, such as the commanders

of smaller fractions of troops such as a cavalry

platoon or an artillery battery, can train their skills

in how to move and employ their units in a given

terrain to accomplish their missions. To accomplish

this goal, this type of virtual simulation must present

a realistic scenario that presents and integrates all the

necessary elements to exercise the skills of these low-

or mid-level commanders.

2.2 Related Works

In (Balint et al., 2015), the authors propose the au-

tomated creation of simulation setups from docu-

ments describing military operations. These docu-

ments present several details about the terrain, the

considered enemy, and the procedures that the mil-

itary personnel has to execute to achieve a military

goal, i.e. the doctrine. They propose a framework,

called VerbsEye, which is a text-to-scene system that

relies on descriptive texts to generate scene scripts

and agents’ behavior scripts for virtual environments.

In the SIS-ASTROS project, the representation ﬁ-

delity to the military doctrine of the Brazilian Army

is also a relevant aspect. In (Mamdouh et al., 2012),

the authors present a realistic behavioral model for hi-

erarchical coordinated movement and formation for

real-time strategy and war. It is capable of propagat-

ing orders through a long chain of command, starting

at a brigade level, down through intermediary levels

to individual units deployed on the ﬁeld. However,

differently from SIS-ASTROS, their work does not

provide the integration of different simulators.

The work developed in the SIS-ASTROS project

can also be understood as a serious game. Among

other reasons, it uses several aspects of digital games

to teach and train skills (Susi et al., 2018) related to

the command and operation of the ASTROS system.

The usage of serious games in military training has

a long history and many works about this usage can

be found in the literature (Smith, 2010) (Pallavicini

et al., 2015). The French military developed a se-

rious game for massive training and assessment of

soldiers that are involved in forwarding combat ca-

sualty care (3D-SC1) (Pasquier et al., 2016). Despite

the usage of 3D techniques similar to those used in

the SIS-ASTROS project, the goal of the 3D-SC1

SIS-ASTROS: An Integrated Simulation System for the Artillery Saturation Rocket System (ASTROS)

195

is more focused on training the users in technical-

operational procedures, while particularly the virtual-

tactical Simulator in the SIS-ASTROS project focuses

on training tactical skills.

In summary, the literature on military simulation

systems indicated that the SIS-ASTROS project is a

pioneer in integrating different types of simulations in

the same setup. It is possible to ﬁnd related works that

“scratch the surface” of this problem, providing cer-

tain levels of integration. However, the SIS-ASTROS

project approaches the integration of different types of

simulation, providing speciﬁc contributions in each of

the different simulation areas, as well as the proposal

of the virtual-tactical blended approach.

3 SIS-ASTROS OVERVIEW

Figure 1 presents an overview of the SIS-ASTROS

architecture, with its internal components and exter-

nal interfaces. The boxes inside the “Computer-Based

Training” represent the educational software for each

vehicle member of an ASTROS Battery. The goal of

this software is to provide the ﬁrst contact of each bat-

tery vehicle to their future users. For some of these

vehicles, there also is a corresponding Virtual Tech-

nical Simulator (SVTec). They are physical cabins

mimicking the exact aspects of the corresponding ve-

hicles. Besides being used for basic operational train-

ing purposes, these Virtual Technical Simulators can

also be used in an integrated manner, among them-

selves, or between them and the Virtual Tactical Sim-

ulator (SVTact). Used to train the tactical skills of

a Battery commander, this Virtual Tactical Simulator

can operate stand-alone, integrated with the Virtual

Technical Simulators, or integrated with other sim-

ulators outside the SIS-ASTROS architecture. For

instance, the Virtual Tactical Simulator can be inte-

grated with the Constructive Simulator used by the

Brazilian Army (called Combater

™

), which is respon-

sible for the development of strategic level simula-

tions for higher-rank commanders. The integration

between the simulators is performed following the

IEEE High-Level Architecture (HLA) standard (IEEE

Std 1516-2010, 2010).

The integrated usage of different simulators is

one of the major requirements posed by the Brazil-

ian Army in the development of the SIS-ASTROS

project. Hence, it is possible to perform simu-

lations integrating the Virtual Technical Simulators

only, or them with the Virtual Tactical one, or this last

one with a Constructive Simulator outside the SIS-

ASTROS architecture. In practice, it is also possi-

ble to integrate all these three types of simulators in a

Figure 1: Overall schematic representation of the SIS-

ASTROS elements and its interface with external simula-

tors.

single simulation exercise from a self-developed mul-

tiresolution solution (Paul et al., 2017). These possi-

bilities for different integration setups provide means

to explore the simulators in multiple ways depending

on the goal of a given simulation exercise. The data

provided by a higher-level simulator can also be used

to trigger situations in the lower-level ones. For in-

stance, data about the employment of forces decided

in the higher-level Constructive Simulator can be used

to trigger the displacement of an ASTROS battery.

Such displacement means the need of executing Po-

sition Recognition and Occupation (PRO) actions de-

veloped in the Virtual Tactical Simulator. Once the

PRO decisions are taken, details about the enemy tar-

gets can be passed by the Virtual Tactical Simulator

to the Virtual Technical ones to perform a simulated

rocket launch.

4 THE VIRTUAL TACTICAL PRO

SIMULATOR

The Virtual Tactical Simulator is a key element in the

SIS-ASTROS simulation system. It links the high-

level constructive and low-level technical perspec-

tives, providing means to train tactical skills of mid-

rank military ofﬁcers. This section presents details

about its design, implementation, and operation.

4.1 Architectural Design of the Virtual

Tactical PRO Simulator

The goal of the Virtual Tactical Simulator is to pro-

vide simulation-based means to exercise higher-level

PRO activities executed by ASTROS Batteries com-

SIMULTECH 2022 - 12th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications

196

manders and their direct auxiliary staff. These users

are responsible for tactical decisions related to the

deployment of an ASTROS Battery. Among others,

they need to choose appropriate tactical locations to

be used and the route to move from one position to

another. To successfully perform such activities, it is

necessary to observe many general rules regarding the

correct usage of the resources and constraints of given

equipment, as well as the environmental and battle-

ﬁeld conditions, such as weather, time of the day, and

enemies and allies’ troop locations.

Training tactical aspects regarding the employ-

ment of ASTROS batteries require the usage of maps

of the terrain area where the PRO activities have to

be executed. In practice, battery commanders need to

analyze the terrain locations that could be used, for in-

stance. Besides that, once a given location is selected

on the map representation of the terrain, it is impor-

tant to get information about how the terrain looks like

in the reality, how dense the vegetation is there or if

terrain locations in consideration are ﬂoodable or not,

or to analyze if a bridge in a given movement route

can support the weight of the vehicles that compose

the battery convoy. To exercise such aspects, the Vir-

tual Tactical Simulator was designed to present two

user-interface perspectives, one is two-dimensional

(2D) and another three-dimensional (3D).

In the 2D perspective, the users interact with a

map via a very large digital table. This touch-screen

simulation table allows the users to select positions

and routes in the simulated map, besides performing

all the simulation activities of a PRO execution, such

as parking the vehicles in a given location, disem-

barking/boarding staff out/in the vehicles, selecting

the vehicles that will perform a given action, ﬁring

and reloading the launchers, among others. In tech-

nological terms, the digital table is a capacitive touch-

screen interface with 80” full-HD resolution, which

allows multiple touches, allowing the interaction of

more than one user at the same time.

In the 3D perspective, the users visualize the de-

tails of the simulated terrain, such as the conditions of

a bridge or the vegetation density. In effect, the sim-

ulator was designed so that the 2D perspective is pre-

sented on a digital touch table, while the 3D perspec-

tive is presented on a Wall-TV panel. This Wall-TV

is a LED-Wall with 146” full-HD resolution, provid-

ing higher resolution compared to other alternatives

to implement such a wall. These elements can be

seen in the representation of the simulator depicted

in Figure 2. This ﬁgure also shows a third element,

which is the instructor terminal. That is the place

where the instructor sets up the simulation exercises

through a 2D visualization interface, creating an en-

tire operational situation that has to be examined by

the trainees. All these three elements are intercon-

nected and synchronized in such a way that the in-

structor may interfere in the running simulations to in-

clude training challenges, change simulation parame-

ters, and examine all the simulation commands per-

formed by the trainees.

Figure 2: SIS-ASTROS Virtual Tactical Simulator Setup.

Understanding the peculiarities of a project in-

volving the Federal University of Santa Maria -

UFSM and the Brazilian Army (i.e. two different fed-

eral government entities) was crucial to the choice

of an adequate software process model to satisfy

the needs of the involved parties. Due to the exis-

tence of contractual agreements requiring the deliv-

ery of project artifacts at ﬁxed intervals of time (e.g.

the speciﬁcations of requirements for each project

goal, the hardware and software technical speciﬁca-

tions, the incremental versions of the simulator, etc),

the plan-oriented approach for software development

served as the basis for the deﬁnition of such a soft-

ware process used in the SIS-ASTROS project. Ag-

ile methods were also used in activities of software

implementation and testing, and team management,

emphasizing the principles of collaboration and com-

munication, in addition to allowing the answering of

requests for software change. The key issues encoun-

tered during the project development along with the

adopted software engineering solutions were docu-

mented. Thereafter, these pieces of project develop-

ment experiences were described as a set of lessons

learned (Brondani et al., 2019a). They can be reused

in the development of similar projects.

Constructed as different layers that expand the

computing resources of the Unity 3D engine (Unity-

Technologies, 2022), the software implementation of

SIS-ASTROS: An Integrated Simulation System for the Artillery Saturation Rocket System (ASTROS)

197

this Virtual Tactical Simulator was designed to be

modular. The software packets composing the archi-

tectural design are organized as follows: AI, Behav-

ior, Cameras, Core, Events, Networking, Tasks,

Terrain Engine and UI.

The AI packet hosts the classes responsible for

creating a hierarchical data structure that is used to

construct the terrain navigation graph (Brondani et al.,

2019b). This graph maintains the terrain informa-

tion that is used in the computation of various kinds

of simulated agent behaviours. Storing all the data

related to the roads of the virtual terrain, it is used

to support the autonomous displacement of vehicles

along the roads during the execution of the simula-

tions (Brondani et al., 2017) (Brondani. et al., 2018).

The Behaviour packet contains a set of classes

implementing the physical behavior of the entities

representing the military personnel, vehicle, and rock-

ets (Menezes and Pozzer, 2018). The Soldiers packet

is responsible for all functionalities and behaviors of

the entities representing the military personnel in the

simulations. It has also a structure that enumerates the

simulation state of these entities.

The Vehicles packet contains classes implement-

ing the behavior of each battery vehicle, i.e. Vehicle-

TypeControler. These classes inherit attributes and

methods representing the common behavior of all the

vehicles in the simulator. The Rocket class imple-

ments methods that control the launching, the noise

direction, the explosion once the rockets hit the target,

among other particular aspects related to the rocket

launching.

The Cameras packet organizes the classes re-

sponsible for controlling the cameras used in the 3D

simulation projection presented in the Wall-TV. It also

controls the cameras used as viewpoints helpers, used

to zoom a given part of the simulation. There are

three control modes for the cameras, which can be

controlled via joystick or mouse: follow, orbit and ﬂy.

The Core packet contains the Projection class,

which is responsible for the conversion of coordinates

from UTM to geographic latitude and longitude rep-

resentations. The Events packet contains the classes

responsible for handling the different events triggered

during a simulation, such as the beginning of a sim-

ulation, the changes in the focus of the cameras, the

loading of vehicles, among others.

The Networking packet is responsible for han-

dling the objects that are used in different computer

stations that compose the simulation system, i.e. the

instructor terminal, the tactical digital table, and the

Wall-TV. These elements are connected to a network

in which they need to be synchronized. This syn-

chronization is related to the semantic elements of the

simulation, for instance synchronizing the effects of a

certain simulation condition both in the Wall-TV and

the digital table.

The Tasks packet contains the classes responsible

for handling all movements performed by the battery.

Moreover, it contains another packet, called Battery,

representing the classes responsible for the activities

related to the PRO implemented in the simulator. Ex-

amples of such activities are the waiting position and

ﬁre position recognition and occupation, etc.

The TerrainEngine packet contains the classes

that handle the 3D visualization in the Wall-TV. They

implement methods to load data about the terrain

features, such as roads (Torres et al., 2019), rivers

(Menegais et al., 2021), vegetation (Franzin et al.,

2019), elevations, physics (Kaufmann et al., 2021),

etc. Finally, the UI packet contains the classes that

handle all user interface features, both of the instruc-

tor terminal and the digital table.

4.2 Operation Possibilities

Following the military doctrine related to human re-

sources training, the Virtual Tactical Simulator can be

used in the instruction and exercise modes, which are

detailed in the following.

The instruction simulation mode is dedicated to

teaching-learning activities that aim to train military

commanders in how to fully employ an ASTROS

Battery. In this mode, the instructor creates the en-

tire simulated military operation along with speciﬁc

teaching goals, so that the trainees learn certain skills.

It is possible to create a simulation to present a certain

problem-solving situation and the course of actions to

solve it so that the trainees learn and build up their

knowledge concerning that pedagogical goal. It is

also possible to reproduce certain aspects of the doc-

trine in the simulations or to create different types of

simulation setups focusing on the learning of a given

doctrine procedure. The instructor can interfere at any

time in such simulations. For example, the instructor

may change the difﬁculty level of a given setup by in-

serting particular simulated military problems (SMP),

which have to be solved by the trainees. The usage of

SMP represents an important tool to realistically rep-

resent situations that have to be handled by the users

of the ASTROS Batteries in a real-world situation.

The exercise simulation mode is used to train the

abilities of more experienced military staff who has

already the basic formation in how to employ an AS-

TROS Battery. This mode can be speciﬁcally used

to train the commanders of ASTROS Batteries in iso-

lated battery operations or the context of a larger mil-

itary maneuver. In the ﬁrst case, an instructor can cre-

SIMULTECH 2022 - 12th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications

198

ate the whole simulated situation, and interfere in it

by including SMPs at any time. Notice, however, the

goal here is not to teach skills as in the instruction

simulation mode, but it is to train the effective appli-

cation of such skills. The goal is to provide a sim-

ulated environment in which military staff members

can exercise their knowledge, enhancing their skills

in the employment of the ASTROS Batteries.

In these simulation modes, instruction and exer-

cise, the Virtual Tactical Simulator can be used as a

stand-alone simulator, or integrated with other simu-

lators. In the stand-alone option, the Virtual Tactical

Simulator is executed without communication with

any other simulator. In the integrated option may ex-

ecute in different setups, considering the integration

only with a Constructive simulator, or only with Vir-

tual Technical Simulators, or with both of them, de-

pending on the simulation purposes under concern.

In all forms of operation, it is possible to record

the details of the simulated setup and the actions per-

formed by the users so that after-action review (AAR)

tasks can be performed. AAR represents a valuable

way of developing a structured review or debrieﬁng

over the simulation exercises.

5 GRAPHICAL USER

INTERFACE

The virtual tactical simulator offers two distinct visu-

alization perspectives: one in 2D and another in 3D.

These interfaces, as well as the integration between

them, are presented in detail in the following.

5.1 The 2D Interface: Digital Table

The main interface provided by the virtual tacti-

cal simulator is the interactive digital table, which

presents the simulated scenario in two dimensions.

This interface allows the user to interact with the sys-

tem by executing a number of actions, such as select-

ing routes, determining areas of interests, e.g. tacti-

cal positions, among many others. The digital table

allows the visualization of two different types of im-

ages, which are the topological maps and the satellite

images. The topographical maps are constructed from

vector ﬁles (scale 1:50.000) which describe regions,

names of locations, roads, rivers, among other fea-

tures of the terrain. The satellite images present the

real-world environment, allowing the observation of

details related to the type of vegetation, rivers, lakes,

type of the terrain, among other details. While the to-

pographical maps are stored in relatively small-sized

ﬁles, the satellite images may require the use of large

data volumes. For the developed scenarios in the cur-

rent version of the simulator, the satellite images are

composed of ﬁles with 8 GigaPixel (GPixel), repre-

senting approximately one pixel every half squared

meter of the represented terrain. To manage such a

huge ﬁle, a multi-resolution approach was adopted

(Backes et al., 2017).

The construction of the 8 GPixel image required a

large development effort once it is the combination of

a large number of smaller satellite images individually

collected. Besides differences related to the color dis-

tribution, they covered several overlapping regions.

To address this problem, a technique was developed

to merge these images, handling the overlapping re-

gions, and adjusting the histograms. At the end of this

merging process, the resulting image was submitted to

a multi-resolution and compression process, allowing

the usage of a smaller space for its storage. Figure

3 presents an example of an 8 GPixel satellite image

used in the simulator.

Figure 3: Example of an 8 GigaPixel satellite imagery

(Backes et al., 2017).

The interface provided by the interactive digital

table allows the user to execute many commands over

the displayed map. The user can insert areas of inter-

est, such as tactical positions, as well as to send or-

ders to the simulated battery, such as select individual

units to move to a given location, load the launchers,

and many other commands. To avoid overcrowding

the interface with buttons, a context-sensitive inter-

face approach was adopted. Depending on the area

in which the user clicks, i.e. in the type of the tac-

tical area, a speciﬁc menu is exhibited with the spe-

ciﬁc commands that can be executed in that area in

that given moment. Figure 4 presents the process of

selecting and drawing tactical positions on the map,

within a given area. The gray pop-up menu located

almost in the middle of the map allows the user to

draw other tactical positions inside that area. In Fig-

ure 5, the menu for the possible battery actions in the

context of a given tactical position is presented.

SIS-ASTROS: An Integrated Simulation System for the Artillery Saturation Rocket System (ASTROS)

199

Figure 4: The usage of the context sensitive menu in the

process of planning the tactical positions of the battery:

Pop-up menu active to select the positions.

Figure 5: The context sensitive menu for a given tactical

position displaying four icons for the following actions: oc-

cupy area, identify area, delete area, and reload launchers.

5.2 The 3D Interface: Wall-TV

For the 3D interface, the goal is to provide the max-

imum virtual realism possible. To imitate the real-

world scenario as realistically as possible but keep-

ing the system responsiveness, concerns related to

the memory and processor usage are taken into ac-

count in the simulator. The mesh of the terrain is

rendered using up-to-date shader techniques. Vege-

tation is rendered using billboards and 3D models,

along with optimized data structures on GPU (Franzin

et al., 2019). Billboards are used to represent grass

and distant trees. For those trees that are close to a

camera, 3D multi-resolution models are used. Figure

6 presents examples of the graphical elements that are

part of the virtual scenario.

5.3 2D-3D Interfaces Integration

The simulator is divided into three instances, each one

running in one of the nodes that compose the Virtual

Tactical Simulator, i.e. one running in the Instruc-

tor Terminal, a second running in the Tactical Digital

Table, and a third running in the Wall TV. This last

instance is the one that controls the entire simulation,

i.e. it is a simulation server. The simulated agents’

actions of movement are performed in this instance

due to the large amount of represented terrain details,

along with the behavior of the agents governed by the

AI algorithms. Moreover, the instance running in the

Wall TV also stores the information for the execution

of the After Action Review (AAR) tasks. The other

two components of the simulator are synchronized

with the Wall TV through a synchronization network

available in the Unity engine, which allows the syn-

chronization of variables called syncvar. Once a sync-

var variable is updated in the Wall TV, this update is

propagated to the other two instances running in the

other simulator nodes.

6 CONCLUSION

Computer-based simulation represents an important

asset to train military forces. Despite the evolution

of the different tools used in the scenario of mili-

tary simulation, there is a lack of solutions that in-

tegrate the different levels of simulations, i.e. Live,

Virtual, and Constructive. To address this issue SIS-

ASTROS integrates constructive and virtual simu-

lation. In essence, this paper approaches the SIS-

ASTROS advances concerning this integration and

the design of the virtual tactical simulator.

As future work it can be cited the integration with

Live simulation in the SIS-ASTROS setup, and the

consistency and robustness of the entire system under

intermittent and faulty connections situations.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank the Brazilian Army for the ﬁnancial support

through the SIS-ASTROS (813782/2014) and SIS-

ASTROS GMF (898347/2020) projects.

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