About Wes Bard

Q: What is your role for Lockheed Martin and the Prepar3D team?

A: I am a software manager at Lockheed Martin's Mission Systems and Training business, and I am the technical lead for the Prepar3D® team. In this role, I manage our development team and ensure that we are incorporating feedback from the Prepar3D community into future releases.

Q: When did you first start working with flight simulators? Do you have an interest in real aviation and are you involved in it in any way other than what you do for Lockheed Martin? Tell us about any experiences you've had in Real World Aviation?

A: My background is in software engineering, but aviation has interested me for quite awhile. I look forward to getting up in a Cessna 172 whenever I can. In fact, several of us on the Prepar3D development team are studying towards various licenses. I'm enjoying ground school at the moment.

About The Company

Q: What was Lockheed Martin's reason for deciding to develop a flight simulation program?

A: Lockheed Martin continuously looks for new and cost-effective ways to help our customers rise to the challenges of tomorrow. Thirty years ago, Lockheed Martin worked with customers to introduce simulation to maximize the training experience. Our Mission Systems and Training business currently provides training systems for 36 military aircraft variants, including the most advanced training system ever developed, the F-35 Lightning II. These training systems are engineered to provide the shortest path to learning by incorporating simulation.

In 2009, Lockheed Martin had an opportunity to enter an intellectual property licensing agreement with Microsoft to further develop its ESP™ technology. Lockheed Martin launched our version of the simulation software, Prepar3D®, in 2010 for immersive learning and training.

This is a natural fit for our business as we look to reduce costs for our customers by moving training tasks from aircraft to full mission simulators, and from full mission simulators to part-task and desktop trainers for the right level of technology to meet the learning objective.

 

Q: Does Lockheed Martin use the simulator in the real world aviation side of the company and if so how?

A: Absolutely, we work across our corporation to advance global security technologies every day, including with our Aeronautics business which develops mobility aircraft like the C-5 and C-130, fighters like the F-16, F-22 and F-35 and trainers like the T-50.

Here's an example. Recently, the U.S. Air Force noted an opportunity to provide cockpit familiarization and procedures training to C-130J aircrews before they enter full fidelity simulators for mission-based training.

Lockheed Martin developed a quickly reconfigurable platform called the Multi-Function Training Aid to provide familiarization and procedures training for aviation and ground vehicles. This training tool uses Prepar3D and commercial-off-the-shelf hardware, and it has integrated touch screen panels, switches, dials and simulated controls.

For C-130J training, we worked with our Aeronautics business to equip the Multi-Function Training Aid with the operational flight program of the actual aircraft. Today, Air Force Special Operations personnel train on the systems at Cannon and Kirtland Air Force Bases.

Q: Where does the Prepar3D department sit in the structure of Lockheed Martin?

A: Our Prepar3D program team is part of Lockheed Martin's Mission Systems and Training business area which develops training systems for the aviation, ground, maritime and cyber domains. Mission Systems and Training also provides platforms like the Aegis Combat System, Littoral Combat Ship and unmanned K-MAX as well as alternative energy solutions.

Q: In what ways does your team interact with the real world aviation side of the company?

A: Vic, let us know if the MFTA example also addresses this question. We work across our corporation to address our customers' challenges every day!

About The Product

Q: Please tell us what you personally feel is one of the most interesting or exciting uses you have seen for the Prepar3D product?

A: We are really proud and excited that Prepar3D is inspiring the next generation of engineers and technologists through our academic license. Our decision to offer an academic license at reduced pricing is an extension of our philanthropic support to encourage kids to explore science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers.

In our increasingly complex global environment, economic health and national security relies on cultivating a pipeline of trained and capable technical talent. The National Flight Academy is one of the organizations we support, and their mission is to engage young people in learning through stories of aviation.

Over the next five years, the National Flight Academy plans to reach more than 60,000 students through their classroom, community and in-residence programs.

Q: Prepar3D furthers the development of Microsoft's ESP product while maintaining compatibility with Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Can you tell us in what ways Prepar3D has been enhanced?

A: Beyond our military customers, we saw applications for training by private pilots, commercial flight schools, civil agencies and students. To transport users to any place on earth, from underwater to suborbital space, we expanded the simulation to support ground and maritime missions. Here are some of the enhancements we've made in the 1.0 to 1.4 releases of Prepar3D:

• Global land class update - Millions of square kilometers of the earth have been checked and upgraded appropriately to represent the urban environment more accurately. One of our developers had this idea and worked on the update for a little over a month. After reviewing the datasets involved we were able to make correlations that helped identify which of the hundreds of landclass types should be improved. The datasets were processed in both GIS and SQL databases that are used to handling datasets with over 500 million points so we had technology on our side! We also went through a few iterations to make sure the changes are unique to the regions.
• Downtown Norfolk scenery - Prepar3D offers the most accurate city representation, scenery that was created directly from aerial photos and contains 12 cm imagery. Our friends at Pictometry developed this scenery through a process they developed. The land class changes mentioned above also made a huge difference - the scenery is more detailed, accurate and crisp than offered before. We also have the ability to go underwater with the bathymetry scenery on the U.S. coastlines and the ability to adjust the transparency of the water so you can better see the shorelines.
• Shader 3.0 and increased texture sizes - A modernized shader model is offered for higher quality graphics and increased texture limits to 4096 x 4096. If you compare this texture upgrade in digital camera terms, we increased the maximum resolution from 1 megapixel to 16 megapixels. This allows for much higher fidelity visuals. Specifically, the Shader 3.0 update allows for more instructions per shader, which we leveraged to create our new translucent water surface. It also improves performance on some hardware due to driver optimizations.
• Bathymetry - Users can take their simulation experience under water with submarines and the U.S. Geological Survey's coastal bathymetry. This feature includes the ability to import users' custom bathymetry models using the Software Development Kit (SDK). The bathymetric data is the equivalent to an underwater digital elevation model and provides the ability to add underwater terrain anywhere in the world. This adds new perspectives for submarine, aerial water landings and boating training.
• Multi-channel - Users can harness the power of multiple computers to increase the quality of Prepar3D's graphics, stability and performance on huge monitors or multiple monitors. Prepar3D offers multi-player and shared cockpit modes, and we wanted to expand those features and rev up the program's performance for large or multiple monitors. We leveraged the existing software code to allow for multi-screen simulation, spreading out the graphics processing across several computers. Multi-channel works in two modes. The first option allows monitors to be placed individually, allowing for full 360-degree wraparound display systems and offering more than one view per computer. The other mode can be used for flat or nearly flat video walls and supports perspective-correcting technologies (OmniMap from Scalable Display Technologies and EasyBlend from Elumenati).
• IR sensor camera options - Users can experience night vision and infrared sensor camera options to enhance military mission or night flying training. We filter the vehicles, auto generated elements and other scenery objects based on relative heat values and color the screen based on that information. The challenge lies in separating all the vehicles and scenery objects into temperature categories, and we developed a new process for that when developing the camera options.
• Performance - We continually focus on improving performance to create a user experience second to none. Throughout our version 1 series of Prepar3D software, the team has improved upon many legacy issues for performance gains. The community plays a vital role in improving performance by citing their experiences in our online forums; the forums are a venue that allows our developers valuable insight into performance of the software. The statistics are showing better and better performance and that is something all of us on the Prepar3D development team believe illustrates a great partnership with the user community.

Q: Tell us how you go about your product/software quality assurance how you find and resolve any issues found during the software development process?

A: Prepar3D has a varied customer base that uses the program in different ways, which in turn provides a continuous feedback loop to the software development team. Another key to our software quality assurance is our forums where end users and developers alike are active and are keen to provide their feedback and ideas about the product. Feedback from forums have helped shape features in Prepar3D, such as the multi-monitor capability, saving a multi-screen cockpit layout on start-up, additional sensor and camera options and numerous performance improvements and bug fixes.

Also, we are focused on ensuring our main Prepar3D developers are a key part of our release process by providing them with beta software in advance of major releases. We look forward to this summer when our new beta software is active in the development community.

Q: ModelConverter helps convert static models from other simulation systems, and Model Placer helps people place large numbers of models in the scenery. Could you tell us a little about these and if you have plans to create a product to help create aircraft add-ons?

A: The ModelConverter and ModelPlacer are additional tools we sell on our web site that make it easier to convert and place large numbers of models. These tools are optional and they aren't required to use the Prepar3D SDK or build content for Prepar3D. We are excited about the future of the Prepar3D SDK Modeling Tools for 3D Studio Max 2013, which will allow content creators and developers to use the 2013 version and all of its latest modeling features to develop for Prepar3D. Involving the development community is a key part of shaping the software, and we plan to offer these new tools for beta testing.

Q: What is the most challenging aspect of the project?

A: We are listening to our user community and increasing performance. Prepar3D is well on a path to take advantage of modern day computing hardware, moving away from the tradition of being CPU bound.

We are now updating our rendering system to support DirectX11 and development is progressing nicely. With DirectX11 support, Prepar3D can leverage features such as hardware instancing, shaders, GPU-based particle systems, tessellation and multi-threaded rendering.

Q: Can you share with us more (in general if possible) about where you see Prepar3D going in the future? Tell us more about what we will be able to do or features you might have planned?

A: Every day, we see more and more developers who are creating peripheral products that work with Prepar3D to enhance the simulation experience. We love developers and encourage the development of software add-ons and hardware. They are creating amazing aircraft, weather effects and scenery.

Developers' work expands the options available to the Prepar3D community for tailored learning experiences. One of the key reasons we wanted to make sure we maintained backwards compatibility with FSX was to facilitate an easy migration of developer content over to Prepar3D for more immersive learning and training.

Our team's development work is now directed to further amping up performance and adding weapons training for our military customers.

• Performance - As we mentioned earlier, feedback from developers and users in the community indicate that performance is a high priority. We're excited about the future of Prepar3D's new rendering capability and are eager to be able to release it to the community in 2013.
• Weapons training - Prepar3D will soon offer weapons training to allow our military customers a training capability for weapon selection and target acquisition.

We're honored to be part of engaging people all over the world in learning through simulation. Thanks for this great interview, Vic, and we welcome feedback about Prepar3D at our web site, www.prepar3d.com

 

Vic, we are sometimes asked if Prepar3D can be used for entertainment. If you'd like to include a question about entertainment, here is an answer.

A: Lockheed Martin does not offer Prepar3D for entertainment, and we have no plans to enter the entertainment space. Our end-user license agreement explains that Prepar3D can be used for purposes other than personal/consumer entertainment. Our development focus is on learning and training.

We are sometimes asked where Prepar3D can be used. Location is not a consideration in the end-user license agreement; it only matters how the software will be used.

We see the core audiences for our products as:

Professionals - This license is intended for professional skills training. This group could include private pilots, commercial flight schools, military personnel, civil organizations such as firefighters/emergency response or students pursuing a technical degree or an advanced degree such as a masters or PhD.

Students - We launched an academic license recently at a reduced price for educational purposes at the undergraduate college level and below (students in elementary, middle, high school or pursuing a bachelor's degree). This is an extension of our philanthropic support for STEM education to engage the next generation of technologists and engineers.

Developers - To provide the best experience for all companies and individuals working with Prepar3D, we provide a standardized interface and tools so that anyone can create Prepar3D-compatible products. Encouraging development is the driving force behind offering open access to an online SDK, tools and simconnect interface. For the individuals or companies who are interested in developing aircraft models, scenery, terrains and weather effects for Prepar3D, we offer a Prepar3D developer license.

Wesley Bard - Lockheed Martin

Review conducted by Vic Baron

Learn more about Prepar3D at:
www.prepar3d.com