A SIMULATED OCEAN ENVIRONMENT FOR A MARITIME SIMULATION DEMONSTRATION

A simulated ocean environment was developed and implemented to support the September 1993 Maritime Simulation Demonstration sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency. The demonstration was based on a s cenario for a hypothetical naval operation using low-frequency acousti c detection technology in the Sea of Japan. Objectives were to provide a realistic ocean environment and to demonstrate the ability of Navy operationally based real-time products to support complex simulations. An assessment of the Sea of Japan revealed that February environmenta l conditions yielded the best acoustic detection ranges and hence grea ter opportunity for player interaction, This result underscores the im portance of environmental considerations in both the planning and exec ution of a simulation, The environmental description was then develope d from a dynamic model of the Sea of Japan as well as available climat ological and bathymetric databases, The same ocean environment was pro vided to all simulation participants to achieve consistency and realis m, although calculations of acoustic system performance still varied b ecause the participants used different acoustic models.