RNI Enters a SBIR Phase III Transition Program with the Army
RNI was recently awarded a SBIR Phase III project with RDECOM-STTC to commercialize the GDIS and MMIST (Product Name VIKENG) products to government and industry. The Phase III project exends a contacting vehicle to interested parties and has scope to migrate GDIS and Man-worn Immersive technologies to different game engines (CRY3 Engine Illustrated) to demonstrate the real-time API and Simulation Bridge capabilities of GDIS for using multiple game engines and LVC simulations simultaneously in a common experiment. The CRY3 engine integration is supported under a research license with Crytek and Real-Time Immersive. The use of multiple engines allows the best engine to be used for each player role such as:
- Air, Land, Sea Assets – Mixed forces (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Civilian, etc)
- Large/Small Groups and Entity Counts
- MMORPG or First Person Shooter Interfaces
Other items in the Phase III scope include extension of Man-Worn immersive systems to Haptic Devices (Shot location, persisting pain, virtual object physics force/feedback and manipulation. The scope also extends virtual locomotion technology reserarch into the experimentation phase.
Under a current BAA with RDECOM-STTC RNI is performing a multi-phase study with experiments to assess, identify, and evaluate virtual locomotion techniques for the US Army. Over 27 systems were researched, evaluated and discussed in order to answer the three goals for this project. Different sensors, devices and systems that help enable those products were also studied and discussed.
GDIS and MMIST technologiies will be updated to support numerous human interface modalities extensions to Counter Nacro Terroism mission, equipments, scenarios, and agents. These updates will extend the system to a wider range of playable levels (Afghanistan, Columbian Jungles, Border Patrol, etc) and include animal artificial intelligence in support of search for contraban.
RNI is performing direct motion capture and avatar bone manipulation. Man-worn sensory systems emphasize COTS technologies integrated with a wireless PAN. The CNTPO extensions are a plus-up to the current MMIST phase II program.
GDIS technologies will be used on both immersive (man-worn systems) and desktop game-based trainers to assess the pros and cons of training in these systems. The Immersive Desktop Analysis (IDA) effort will culminate in running candidates and evaluators over common scenarios and performing exit interviews to score the users comments in each system.
The study is being performed by Army Research Institute and the results have been published in Behavioral and Social Sciences forums as Usability of Wearable and Desktop Game-Based Simulations. Primary authors at ARI were John Barnett and Grant Taylor.
GDIS will be updated to support combat medic operations in live distributed serious game play using multiple commercial gaming engines.
RNI is supporting the Army Research Institute and 
GDIS tied for first place in the People’s Choice Award for the 
RNI had a double presence at I/ITSEC this year. RNI was showing in the 
The GDIS software was the focus of the SBIR/STTR presentations at the conference. The software was demonstrated in both native network form along with integration of standard DIS packages such as OTBSAF and C2MINCs.