Battlefield visualization and VR

During a battle the army needs an overview of the battlefield. First, commanders need to have insight in current and future combat situations to make good strategic decisions. This is referred to as command and control. Second, commanders need to plan and evaluate possible movements of forces which is called planning and shaping. Currently command and control as well as planning and shaping are primarily accomplished with paper maps and acetate overlays. Some data is entered into a computer system where it can be analysed and used by a battlefield visualisation system. New developments make it possible to use digitalised information without the use of manpower directly into a battlefield visualisation system called Dragon (see Figure 5/ below).

 The Dragon battlefield visualisation system uses a virtual reality responsive workbench. This workbench provides a 3D display with a tabletop environment in which battlefield information can be used. This information includes a terrain map, entities that represent different units (e.g. friendly, enemy, unknown and neutral), obstructions, key points of the battlefield and other features. Dragon receives feeds with the current status of the battlefield like the number of units, their position, heading, speed and damage and makes sure the situation stays up to date. Users of Dragon can view the map in different angles and can query en manipulate entities.