Visualization and Animation of a Missile/Target Encounter

Existing missile/target encounter modeling and simulation systems focus on improving probability of kill models. Little research has been done to visualize these encounters. These systems can be made more useful to the engineers by incorporating current computer graphics technology for visualizing and animating the encounter. Our research has been to develop a graphical simulation package for visualizing both endgame and full fly-out encounters. Endgame visualization includes showing the interaction of a missile, its fuze cone proximity sensors, and its target during the final fraction of a second of the missile/target encounter. Additionally, this system displays dynamic effects such as the warhead fragmentation pattern and the specific skewing of the fragment scattering due to missile yaw at the point of detonation. Fly-out visualization, on the other hand, involves full animation of a missile from launch to target. Animating the results of VisSim fly-out simulations provides the engineer a more efficient means of analyzing his data. This research also involves investigating fly-out animation via the World Wide Web.