From: Kevin Mullane Subject: WHO: US Army Corps of Engineers Topographic Engineering Center Date: Tue, 4 Feb 92 10:50:21 -0500 I work at the US Army Corps of Engineers Topographic Engineering Center (formerly ETL). Our team has been developing terrain databases for the SIMNET community. SIMNET is a virtual battlefield technology developed under sponsorship of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency over the last five years. Bolt, Baranek and Newman (developers of ARPANET) were the Prime Contractors under the DARPA contract which has resulted in 200 plus networked armored vehicle and helicopter simulators being fielded around the globe. Combined arms exercises have been developed with as many as 800 entities interacting on the battlefield. We became involved 18 months ago with development of a terrain database for support of the Desert Shield action. Since then we have been involved in development of several other terrain databases, each extending over thousands of square kilometers. I see a difference between Virtual Reality and Virtual Fantasy. We work in the "reality" end of the spectrum, while I believe most of the interest at this time is in the "fantasy" end. Our fundamental challenge is to ensure the accurate representation of the "real world" in the "virtual world". We approach this from the perspective of the photogrammetric and cartographic sciences. I have not corresponded with others in the news group using e-mail, however, I have posted two responses to questions that I felt would be of general interest regarding SIMNET. I didn't see these postings appear, so I am wondering if the moderator is forwarding these to the original posters or if there is some problem with our configuration or if perhaps my responses were considered not appropriate for this group. Kevin Mullane at the U.S. Army Topographic Engineering Center, Bldg. 2592 Fort Belvoir, VA 22060-5546 TEL:(703)355-2792 NET: mullane@etl.army.mil