Cortona3D Drives Simulation Developer to Close USA's Fourth Largest Company

Since its 1998 founding, Realtime Technologies, Inc. (RTI) had provided customers with animated, interactive, three-dimensional simulation environments, along with services and consulting. When large contracts loomed, it was necessary to find a development toolset that would interact smoothly with VRML, yet greatly accelerate development and flexibility.

 

Only Cortona3D's RapidSimulation toolset could handle RTI's demands. It imported any VRML file, then sped the development of sophisticated simulation environments.

 

Today, RapidSimulation is the foundation of RTI's product lines. It enables functions once impossible, while speeding up development, cutting costs, yet always delivering scientifically sound simulations of evolving vehicle systems under real-world driving conditions.

 

Customer Description

 

Realtime Technologies Inc. (RTI), founded in 1998, is an industry beacon in providing leading-edge simulation software, consulting, engineering solutions, and software/hardware development. RTI has offices in Michigan, Colorado, and Utah, and the growing company prides itself on a highly communicative, give-and-take atmosphere among all personnel.

 

Since 2001, RTI has created software and engineering solutions for organizations who must implement robust ground-vehicle simulation environments. SimCreator™ is RTI's leading product. RTI markets to corporations, universities, international organizations, and government entities, such as United States Army TACOM.

 

A key RTI product line is vehicle driving simulators that help customers to research their design concepts, their vehicle-handling systems, stability control, anti-lock, and other systems. RTI solutions drastically reduce customers' time and cost to develop interactive simulation, testing, and data acquisition systems. In 2006, RTI announced the licensing of its SimVista™ and SimLights™ to Ford Motor Company for use in Ford's Virtual Test Track Experiment (VIRTTEX) system.

 

Ford's VIRTTEX is a full-motion-based driving simulator with a 360° field of vision. It gives researchers a safe, controlled environment for testing various product features under different driver behaviors. SimVista reduces the customer's development time to create realistic driving scenarios and to collect experimental data. SimLights improves realism of simulated scenes by adding pre-rendered shadows.

 

Ford's computer-aided engineering (CAE) and simulation programs describe the physical dynamics of new and evolving vehicle systems. Cortona RapidSimulation enables SimVista to interact in real time with the output of CAE programs. Ford engineers create and save diverse virtual driving environments using SimVista's intuitive "tiles" to describe hills, curves and texture of roads. They use  SimVista "scenario objects" to insert vehicles, pedestrians, buildings, rainfall and other factors. RTI's SimLights recreates lighting conditions from desert sun in the driver's eyes to night fog.

 

RTI products run in Microsoft Windows environments or under RedHawk Linux, in use at Ford.

 

The Challenges

 

Richard Romano, Founder and President of RTI, describes his team's search for the software underpinnings they needed to rapidly deliver reliable and intuitive systems to important customers like Ford. "Vehicle driving simulators must realistically lay out the driver's world-with all its unpredictable scenarios-just as everything would happen in real time," he explains.

 

"We needed easy-to-use software tools that would capture and retain in one simulation tool all the data-very large amounts of it. We wanted to enable customers to just sit down and start simulating their systems, without delays or special training. Customers typically had to describe the interactions of evolving experimental systems with various drivers and changing road conditions. Then they had to simulate engineering changes they made to their systems based on the results of users 'driving' different systems under varying conditions. It was a very complex needs analysis.

 

"We chose VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) as our technology foundation because of its scope and versatility. VRML file formats support a wide variety of simulation factors, so we knew it would meet our needs yet retain one common file format.

 

But VRML is laborious and time-costly to do complex work in. It's an excellent launching pad, but we still needed ways to deliver turn-key VRML products than ran faster, were less error-prone, not fussy, and completely transparent to the user."

 

Why Select Cortona3D

 

"When we compared products and services, Cortona3D's RapidSimulation tools and support were the only viable solution. Every other technique and tool we reviewed was far more labor-intensive. Some crashed when we loaded odd VRML formats. Some didn't give us features and functions that customers needed.

 

"Only RapidSimulation met all our needs for speed, functionality and file content. We could load in whatever we needed, display it, and make it work. Its user interface made intuitive sense, like a dashboard. It does what you expect, and no one has to learn a programming language."

 

Benefits In Hand

 

"The RapidSimulation tools and services are a cornerstone at RTI,a fundamental enabler of the entire simulation environment capability that we sell. It enable us to make our products. We could not deliver the products that keep customers coming back if we had chosen anything else.

 

"Then there's the time we save our technologists. In VRML, they'd need days to do what we do with Cortona3D in minutes. RapidSimulation is the factor that lets us present the highly intuitive customer interface that customers like. Then that interface helps customers rapidly and accurately implement their testing parameters and commands.That saves them time and money.

 

"Cortona3D empowers RTI customers reduce the number of physical mock-ups they build-and a mock-up can cost up to six figures. We cut down their number of test drives. When they do start real-world tests, they're much farther down the development road and need  fewer iterations. They've narrowed their variables way down."

 

RTI's Heather Stoner, Human Factors Engineer, interfaces directly with Ford's human factors professionals and simulation engineers. She says, "Ford engineers are thrilled and amazed that now they can start with their "OpenFlight" model, use RTI tools to import it into VRML, then use our common-sense interfaces to work with it and create mathematically correct real-world simulations.

 

Previously, they had to use expensive and time-consuming professionals, then had to wait their turn in the service queue. Now Ford uses RTI tools to do what they want, when they need it. Most important, we can now give them flexibilities and functionalities they previously couldn't get at any price.

 

"Now Ford engineers can test and design a series of virtual systems, honing each one better and better, without building each one. They simulate multiple design approaches, then build and test more accurate prototypes.

 

"In the end," points out Stoner, "Ford's consumers benefit by safer and better-engineered systems in Ford vehicles. These systems have been developed more efficiently, economically and perform better under a variety of conditions. RapidSimulation makes it possible for us to provide Ford that capability."