Date of Award

12-1991

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Philip E. Amburn, Lt Col, USAF

Abstract

The Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) is investigating the use of synthetic environments for military applications under the sponsorship of Rome Laboratories (RL). Areas under investigation include mission planning, battle management and flight simulation. The work reported in this thesis focuses on the object-oriented design and implementation of the Graphical Database Management System (GDMS) used to support research in these areas. GDMS provides the data structures, file format and algorithms to manage and render hierarchical, three-dimensional, polygonal models. Flexibility and adaptability were key factors in its design. A secondary objective of this research was to demonstrate the functionality of GDMS through the development of a characteristic application. This led to the design and implementation of a Database Generation System (DBGen) for the construction and manipulation of synthetic environments. DBGen allows a user to orient, scale, move, delete and add multi-resolution objects to synthetic environment interactively. It also provides a real time fly-through capability for immediate feedback on the dynamic response of the database. The development of the Graphical Database Management System was successful. The design and implementation of four major synthetic environment applications based on GDMS tested its flexibility, while the rapid incorporation of a number of special effects algorithms in final stages of the development cycle demonstrated its adaptability. The development of the Database Generation System was also successful. In addition to providing an excellent platform for testing GDMS functionality, it proved to be an effective tool for placing 3-D objects on terrain.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GA-ENG-91D-01

DTIC Accession Number

ADA243788

Comments

The author's Vita page is omitted.

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