Hi everyone,
Today we introduce a video of one of the first result following our buy-out by the Optis Group. The application presented bellow was a shared development between Optis and SimplySim for the Laval Virtual tradeshow (which took place at the beginning of April).
The demo is a prototype of a headlamp simulator. The goal of this application is to test and validate car headlamps before production. The Simulator is build on top of the SimplyCube simulation engine and integrates Optis realistic rendering for light and materials, to guarantee that the simulator can be used to take actual production decision on headlamps (in the video bellow, notice the “false color” mode that gives accurate information on the level of lightning of each point in the environment).
The simulator is built around a driving loop that present different situation that can be interesting to test headlamps: different road materials, street lightning (thanks to the simplycube deferred shading technology we have about 200 dynamic light sources in the environment), reflective street furniture, tunnel, bumpers, countryside and city, end of day or night…
Several model of headlamp have been modeled with the ability to easily change between the headlamp model, and set low beam / high beam mode (there is no limit on the number of different headlamp we can test in the application). All the light models, and all the materials used in the environment have been developed by Optis and are based on real measurement with the OMS devices. This technology, also developed by Optis, studies how light behave on a material to guarantee a simulation as accurate as it can be.
In the video above the Simulator runs on a standard PC, with a nice screen and a game interface for controls, however the SimplyCube is fully compatible with more advanced displays (multi-screens, stereo) and controls (full support of VRPN) so this application could be easily deployed in a more immersive virtual reality system.
Finally, you’ll also notice in the video that the headlamp move as the car turns, for this prototype we have modeled a very simple adaptive headlamp simulation, but thanks to the SimplyCube everything is made so that the simulator could be plugged to a real adaptive headlamp control system.
We’re proud to present you the first result of our new collaboration, and we have to thank the Optis team as it was a real pleasure to work together on this first project. Other projects are in progress we’ll showcase them here as soon as we can.
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First in the name of everyone at SimplySim, I’d like to wish you a happy new year. In 2011 we wish you success and happiness in your professional and personal life.
Today we introduce a new innovation of the SimplyCube: a Kinect controller. The SimplyCube enables you to rapidly and easily create your 3D application, and now you can add a Kinect controller. This new controller enables you to directly control your application with gestures.
The first two prototypes we’re showing in the video above represent only a first preview of the possibilities offered by this technology. From product presentation applications to motion capture, medical applications, education, simulations, or serious games… the possibilities of application are only limited by our imagination.
Stay tuned to our blog, twitter and YouTube channel to discover other innovations in 2011.
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Hello everyone,
After your many feedbacks and requests about our UAV simulation, we are happy to release today a Drone Simulation pack designed for the SimplyCube beta version.
For the last four months, you may have experienced the SimplySim real time 3D simulation engine and you can now go deeper in your SimplyCube experience with this UAV pack.
Nowadays, real time 3D simulation is the best way to test real life hardware and software, especially UAVs. This Drone Simulation pack offers to you a free library for creating your own UAV. It also provides a basic environment for trying it with realistic physic behaviors.
The simulation is delivered with three ready-to-use UAV samples and all the things you need to easily create your own one. You will also find fly controllers such as one using keyboard and a another allowing you to see your drone flying through the environment by following pre-defined points.
Please note that in this demo we only focused on the physic realism with no special effort provided for the graphic quality. For a more complete idea on what can be achieved with the SimplyCube, check out our NanoConcept demo series.
We invite you to take a look at the SimplySim forum if you have any questions about this simulation or drones. Feedbacks and suggestions are also welcome !
Furthermore, improvements will be added as extensions later, such as wind simulation in the environment or drone’s engine breakdown scenarios.
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As we’re moving closer to the opening of the beta version of the SimplyCube simulation engine, I wanted to share with you a few screenshots of our latest projects.
Robotics / apartment simulation
Here the robotics / apartment simulation you’ve already seen in our previous blog posts. The robot represented here is a PekeeII by Wany Robotics. In this project, thanks to our use of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio CCR/DSS architecture, the simulated and the real robot can be controlled by the exact same software, and the same user interface.
Underwater simulation
The screenshots below are from an underwater simulation project. Several advanced 3D techniques are in used here (caustics, ambient occlusion, depth of field…)
Starting tomorrow we’ll be in Monaco for Imagina, if you’re nearby, we’ll be glad to welcome you on our booth where you’ll see all these applications live.
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SimplySim designs software tools to create 3D applications. As you might already have seen in our drone simulation, these tools permit to design 3D simulation applications, but there are several kinds of 3D applications that can be created with them. In today’s post, we have a quick look at different potential applications.
This interactive simulation environment can be used for any application from robotics simulations to serious games, or architectural design project.
Simulation
There are several ways to use 3D simulation in different fields: from the experimentation of new systems to the fields of education and training, or the study of human behaviors in realistic conditions. As explained before, the SimplyEngine has been specifically designed for real time 3D simulation, not only for UAVs but for any system.
When we talk about 3D software, video games are what come to most people’s mind (probably because video games are the first 3D applications that have reached our homes). However when we started doing 3D simulation, we felt that today the industry lacks a real 3D real time simulation engine, a software that is really designed for simulation, not for video games.
Video games
Speaking of video games, the needs of the two fields of simulation and video games can often be the same (and that led some game engine to be used in simulation projects). However the priorities are different and sometimes conflicting: simulation needs more realism, accuracy and easy interactions with other software. That doesn’t mean that you cannot use our simulation engine for video games (and given the quality of our 3D graphic real time rendering this would be understandable), just be warned that the software has been created for simulation and that the first upgrades will be for simulation.
Serious Games
During the last decade, both simulation and video game industries gave birth to “serious games”, which apply video game technology to serious purposes. The limit between serious games, simulations, and traditional video games can be hard to define. We like to see serious games as a simulation that includes some game mechanisms. In any case our product is particularly well suited to the creation of serious games thanks to its high realism and multiple possibilities in terms of interactions.
Virtual reality
Another domain related to those above is the field of virtual reality. 3D has been used in virtual reality for several years now. This is a domain where software and hardware interactions are numerous, and deserve to be simple. Our solution is based on service oriented architecture, and offers very easy ways to integrate any software or hardware with the 3D applications you create with it.
Architecture, 3D Marketing, and more
Of course our tools can also be used in other domains, such as architecture (where 3D has brought a lot in terms of efficiency and cost reduction) or marketing (where 3D offers a new media for brand and product advertising). People working in these domains, and other newcomers to the 3D technologies should particularly appreciate the easy to use and “keep it simple” approach we used when we designed our tools.
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Today, Loïc Morvan, who created the UAV simulation (UAV stands for unmanned aerial vehicle). I have presented in a video last week, is going to tell us more about his work.
Loïc, what is exactly behind this UAV simulation?
Well, this is a real physic 3D real-time simulation that you see here. It is based on Microsoft XNA for 3D rendering, and on different physic engines for physics. The simulated drone which is flying here has real physic attributes such as its mass, inertia, collision shapes… and it behaves realistically to torques and forces we apply to it. The physic equations are solved by precise discrete solvers, which make the drone having a behavior close to reality.
How did you build that simulated drone, and how long did that take?
The whole construction of the simulated drone did not take more than a few days.
First, we need the 3D model of the drone. That part of the work is done by our 3D designers, and it is actually the longer (1 or 2 days).
Then, we have to define the physic shapes of the drones, and physic constraints (mass, dynamic friction, static friction…). As the physic shapes are defined independently from the 3D model, we can choose our degree of complexity by using more or less accurate physic shapes.
Once the 3D model and physic properties are defined, I have attached some sensors, like the camera and the inclinometers.
Finally, I have added the rotors which are generic objects composed by a rotor blade and an engine (mechanic joint), so that the drone flying algorithm can be implemented.
That was over. The next step was to implement the drone control algorithms to test its behavior.
The simulated drone is supposed to behave like the real one, but you use generic objects, how can you explain that?
Generic objects such as the rotors have many parameters so that you can customize them to create your precise item. Here I have set particular max rotation speed and max torque for my rotors, but we could imagine setting other values for another drone.
What about the drone sensors (camera, inclinometers…)?
We also use generic elements. If you want to create a particular simulated motion camera, you just have to take our generic one and modify the parameters: size and quality of the pictures, number of frames per second, additional noise… That’s it!
Could you tell us more about how the wind is simulated?
The simulated wind is pre-generated considering the static objects (buildings…) which compose the simulation. This generation produces a 2D or 3D map which contains the wind information in each 3D point of the environment. Some of the algorithms we use for that come from the world of image processing.
The map is then inserted into the simulation and the wind is applied to every physic object.
You talk about “multi physic engine compatibility”, could you explain what it is exactly?
A physic engine is the program which computes the physic calculations. It contains the discrete solver used to integrate the equations. There are many physic engines available on the market: PhysX, Newton Game Dynamics, Havok, ODE…
Today, most of simulations are compatible with only one of these physic engines. What we do at SimplySim, is to provide the ability to be compatible with any of them, thanks to a technology that we have called SimplyDynamics. This is why we can talk about “multi physic engine compatibility”.
When you create a 3D simulation, do you only need the SimplyEngine?
No, I also need the 3D models of what I want to simulate. For the drone, we have modeled the drone and the 3D environment with 3D modeling tools which our not created by SimplySim. After that, we worked with the SimplyEngine and with our own edition tools.
Can you tell us a bit more about these edition tools ?
These edition tools represent an easy and graphic way to create the different parts of a simulation. For instance, we have one editor to design the physic properties, which is more user-friendly than typing code! There are a lot of other editors we prepare, some of them will be released in 2010, the goal is really to ease as much as possible the process of creating a 3D simulation.
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Today we introduce a first video of the SimplyEngine (our new 3D simulation engine). This video shows a demo we created around the use case of a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) simulation in a city center.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA5Ra9MxRsU&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&hd=1]
If you want to learn more about our drone simulation, check out this page. We’ll also make a longer post here in the following weeks to give you a more detailed view of our work on this simulation. By the way if you have questions or comments, feel free to ask 
