Rapid Integration & Development Environment
A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT TESTBED ACCELERATING DOD SIMULATION TECHNOLOGIES
OVERVIEW
RIDE combines features inherent to commercial game engines with many of the immersive technologies developed throughout the ICT research portfolio. ICT, in direct support of Department of Defense-funded research (DoD), has created this state-of-the-art, modern simulation research and development framework that has proved invaluable in advancing the research of ICT, collaborators, and stakeholders across multiple lines of effort.
RIDE combines and integrates – into a single simulation framework – the following unique capabilities created through ICT research and development: One World Terrain (OWT) data and tools; generative programming; networking; machine learning (ML) tools; speech recognition; natural language processing; character AI behaviors; and scenario event development.
RIDE is integrated with commercial game engines allowing the re-use of visual art, 3D models, and other simulation technologies in the common platform thereby reducing the efforts required to create divergent simulation prototypes. Future ICT work will focus on advancing novel AI and ML approaches; adding narrative summarization to support after-action reviews; supporting research with mixed reality technologies, and expanding the implementation of RIDE across multiple commercial game engines.
ICT has been successful in making RIDE available to DoD organizations interested in using and sponsoring capabilities to support research and development objectives. ICT is working to create a DoD “RIDE Community of Users” in order to expand the awareness of RIDE, encourage its widespread use across the DoD simulation community, and leverage the expertise of DoD researchers and developers to diversify future RIDE capabilities. Sponsored research and development models for RIDE can also be made available to broaden and accelerate advanced simulation prototypes.
For more information and introductory video, please visit the RIDE website.