COTS, Open-Architecture Database Generation System (DBGS)

Quantum3D’s CatalystSE™ 2500 DBGS is a PC-based, integrated, open-architecture, Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) DBGS solution that employs best-of-breed third-party and Quantum3D COTS software tools to enable Quantum3D IG solution customers to develop, modify and maintain wide-area, high-resolution, geospecific synthetic environment databases in support of a broad range of realtime simulation and training applications.

Best of Breed COTS Tool Suite ERDAS IMAGINE™ Advantage –Processes geospecific imagery and prepares source data to reference correct scale and contain correct georeference data before importing into terrain database processing. ESRI ArcView™ – The industry standard desktop GIS and mapping tool for creating and editing geographic data. Ideal for layout of and modification to feature vector data. Terrex® TerraVista™ Pro Builder – Most widely used tool for creating, modifying and optimizing TerraPage and OpenFlight terrain databases. MultiGen-Paradigm Creator™ – The vis-sim industry’s favorite for creating, modifying and optimizing OpenFlight models. Creator is the world’s leading tool for adding 3D culture to realtime terrain databases. Adobe® Photoshop® – Professional standard desktop digital imaging tool for creating, modifying, optimizing, and compressing textures. An essential tool for adding or modifying textures for TerraVista terrain database processing. Quantum3D Mantis™ Realtime IG Software Suite and Utilities – Powerful, extensible IG runtime suite enables application developers to conduct realtime fly-through validation of databases before deployment to the simulator application.

CatalystSE 2500 brings together in a single system environment a powerful tool suite capable of handling nearly all database generation requirements for visual simulation. The open-architecture design also accommodates the addition of complementary tools as the database engineer’s needs dictate.

System Configuration
CatalystSE 2500 includes a powerful server-class system with dual AMD Opteron™ Processors and a range of NVIDIA® Quadro®FX graphics subsystem technologies, which provides industry-leading OpenGL® graphics performance to create and preview databases and database elements at performance levels (however at potentially substantially different image quality and resolution levels) similar to those provided by the customer’s Independence® 2500 IG Solution. The CatalystSE 2500 DBGS comes standard with 4GB of ECC memory, dual RAID drive subsystems, CDRW/DVDRW, Tape Drive and an Un-interruptible Power Supply (UPS) to accommodate the most demanding database development and maintenance requirements.

Configuration Management Tools
CatalystSE 2500 features a DBGS Management Software Suite that enables database developers to keep track of source data that was employed and realtime database files that were produced. With the CatalystSE 2500 management suite, DB engineers can draw on the stored inventory of source data and processed database files to gain increased efficiency, time and cost savings.

Data Integrity
CatalystSE 2500 comes standard with both ECC memory and a UPS that mitigates the loss of processing time due to power interruptions and fluctuations — especially during multi-hour and/or multi-day database builds. Upon power loss, the UPS keeps the system running on battery power and facilitates an automatic and orderly shutdown that saves open files, records the state of processing applications, and closes all processes before the UPS battery is exhausted. In addition, the UPS filters incoming power to prevent system outages due to transient power fluctuations.

Advanced Data Processing
CatalystSE 2500 is optimized to support wide-area, geospecific database generation from a variety of data sources. CatalystSE 2500 supports multiple output projections for maximum host system and IG Solution correlation and compatibility. CatalystSE 2500 also supports multiple texture compression formats for enhanced runtime performance. In addition, a number of optional plug-ins are available including SAF database generation and SEDRIS Import/Export. Terrex DART also is available for importing and converting a range of legacy databases for deployment on Quantum3D IG Solutions. CatalystSE 2500’s integrated environment, working with a common set of source data, significantly reduces the database engineer’s level of effort required to produce correlated databases. With CatalystSE 2500, OTW and SAF databases may be correlated rapidly, because they are built from the same data sets.

Expandability
Designed for growth, CatalystSE 2500 DBGS is housed in a 12U, deskside rack that allows for expansion of hardware, storage and peripherals, should the need arise. By running Mantis and the bundled profiling tools and utilities on the DBGS, database developers can tune their databases for the actual target IG solution. For example, Quantum3D’s offline application, Detailer, enables the database engineer to configure the set of models and special effects to be used in a Mantis session. In addition, Mantis may be customized for unique customer IG requirements; consult Quantum3D for details.

The Independence IV3-141 Visual Channel option enables cost-effective database development and validation on DBGS without impacting limited simulator resources. The IV3-141 channel includes a single IG Rendering Unit, Quantum3D Mantis Software, and a CC3-STD Channel Compositor to render the OTW channel as it would appear deployed on an IDX 2500 IG equipped with an IV3 channel.

Ask your Q3D sales representative for more information.