MODULAR TECHNOLOGY: A METHODOLOGY FOR THE CREATION OF VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS IN TERRAIN DRIVING SIMULATORS

摘要

This paper presents the latest research and developments in Modular Technology, a constructive methodology designed to create the environments of the virtual driving simulators of CITEF. Modular Technology discretizes the scene into a finite number of modules or portions of the environment, which after being instantiated and subjected to a series of geometric transformations using shaders, are meticulously assembled to reproduce the virtual scene. This tiling system has a set of particularities that make it different from the rest of tiling systems used up to now. These particularities are designed to get the maximum benefit of these type of virtual representations and can be summarized in four points: the shape of the module; the way in which the family is defined; the positioning system of these modules; and the deformation of these modules using shaders. In this way a substantial reduction in the number of geographical entities in the environment can be attained and an increase in the diversity and flexibility of the environment. There are many advantages to be had from this form of generation: savings in scene size, loading times and resource requirements, greater flexibility and clarity of the scene graph and a more substantial upgrade capacity of the environment.