BISim Announces Significant Growth and VBS4

Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim) announcedsignificant growth as it heads into the last quarter of 2019. The new contractawards and partnership agreements represent a combination of new customers andexpansion of existing relationships. BISim also hired over 40 new staffglobally over the past 12 months in software development, quality assurance andother key departments to meet continuing demand for its training solutions frommilitary organizations and system integrators.

Since the start of the year, BISim has secured a number of expansionary contracts and partnership agreements. Through seven separate awards, the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army acquired BISim licenses, maintenance and/or development services. These contracts amount to $8.1 million USD and include funding improvements to VBS3, VBS Tactics and VWS (BISim’s newly developed terrain server). This follows funding received under the U.S. Army’s STE initiative which was awarded throughout Q1 and Q2.

KONGSBERG and BISim signed a framework agreement to jointly work on developing simulation solutions for the KONGSBERG PROTECTOR family of Remote Weapons Stations and Medium Caliber Turrets.

The Netherlands’ military renewed and extended theirenterprise license of VBS3 and other BISim products. They also acquired BISim’snew Artificial Intelligence (AI) behaviors through the VBS Behavior Pack 1,allowing for expanded use of computer-generated AI forces in training, reducingthe need for human players and enabling more civilian-pattern-of-life insimulation scenarios. BISim also created VBS Chalkboard Pro, an interface fordrawing (military) overlays in VBS3, providing collaborative planning, overlayexport and printing capabilities.

The Australian Army renewed the Australian Defence Forceenterprise license support for another 12 months and signed new contracts forcontent in VBS3.

The winner of one of the largest JTAC training programs in the world has awarded BISim a subcontract to provide hundreds of VBS Blue IG licenses to eighteen major training sites for a variety of configurations ­­— from mobile systems to large dome displays.

A large European nation is renewing its enterprise licenseof VBS3 and additionally acquiring thousands of licenses of VBS Blue IG.

Building on this momentum, BISim announced that its nextgeneration of desktop training and IG simulation host software, VBS4, will bedemonstrated in December at I/ITSEC 2019 at booth #2534.

“We are further accelerating the capabilities of our productline by introducing VBS4,” Alexion said. “VBS4 brings whole-earth capabilitiesto desktop military simulation and training. Whilst VBS3 is PC-based and hassize limitations for terrain areas, VBS4 offers a massive step change inmodularity, openness and ease-of-use as well as the performance and terrainenhancing capability of BISim’s new engine, VBS Blue. And, importantly, is ourfirst step towards a full cloud-enabled desktop training product.”

With the entire planet rendered in VBS4 using a curated global dataset, a library of vegetation and clutter models, and advanced procedural enhancement, militaries can reduce the cost and time of building new detailed virtual terrains. Terrains can be edited in VBS4 collaboratively for the first time with the new WYSIWYG VBS Geo tool. Other key advantages of VBS4 are view distance improvements over VBS3 and further optimized Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality visualization as well as tighter integration with VBS Blue IG and enhanced capabilities to act as a host for third party IGs.

VBS4 provides a virtual desktop training capability including all VBS3 features and new baseline capabilities. New capabilities include VBS Plan, VBS Geo and VBS World Server.

VBS Plan  is a time-saving mission planning capability allowing instructors and administrators to draw static plans on 2D and 3D maps using standard military symbols and leverage AI forces to execute those plans in the virtual environment.

VBS Geo is a collaborative terrain editing application that doesn’t require geospatial data expertise.

VBS World Server is a terrain server streaming whole-earth terrain layers from the Cloud or a local computer or network to VBS4, reducing hardware and terrain development costs.

By mid-2020, VBS4 will be feature-complete with additional enhancements including an animation and physics upgrade, backwards compatibility with VBS3 missions and terrains, and a new workflow for easier creation and configuration of 3D models. VBS4 will also be customizable and extendable using BISim’s VBS Simulation SDK.