Engineering methods have substantially and continuously evolved over the past 40 years. In the past, engineering products such as vehicles were designed, prototyped, and tested in a hardware environment. The end-user was considered separately from the vehicle or device being engineered.

Driven by ever-increasing performance requirements, customer expectations, global competition, and regulations; the product development process has evolved markedly. Ad-hoc methods have given way to robust design methodologies, mechanical drawings to three dimensional CAD representations, hardware testing to testing in “virtual worlds”, and the operator is now considered part of the overall system. This transition has been enabled by fundamental engineering knowledge, ever-increasing computing power and engineering software.

Historically, for real-time applications, engineers were forced to choose between simulation tools geared toward high-fidelity simulation, and those geared toward graphically represented interactive realistic environments.

This division has taken place because of the dichotomy between computing products developed for visualization that used high-end hardware and software for multimedia rendering, and those developed for engineering simulation/computation (e.g. FEA, crash simulations, etc).

The latter were developed and optimized for number “crunching,” and used hardware and software display techniques for after-the-fact data display with limited graphics.

Computing platforms may be obtained at local retail stores for less than $2000 that far outperform workstations or supercomputers costing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in the recent past.

Machines with 3 GHz+ processors, gigabytes of RAM, advanced graphics and sound capabilities, and 100 Mb/s communications are found in many households across the country.

Moreover, the internet has made instantaneous, almost transparent networking available at extremely low cost.

Video Games are at the Cutting Edge

At the forefront of this revolution has been the entertainment simulation (“video game”) industry. Since the early 1970s, video games have pioneered interactive simulation and laid the groundwork for inexpensive computing that individuals, corporations, and governments benefit from today.

Gaming has made computing truly pervasive in the United States and worldwide. The insatiable appetite for entertainment and ever increasing expectations of the general public have fostered a tremendous level of competition in the video game industry, currently a $2B yearly market (comparable to the entire digital prototyping and simulation market (CAE) in 2003!).

This competition has yielded simulation products, software tools and techniques, and hardware platforms that have tremendous performance at extremely low cost.

Quantum Signal, through its gaming and simulation division, is bringing together video game technology and virtual product development to provide new tools for your organization.

We specialize in providing interactive, video-game style graphics, sound, and real-time performance that directly integrates with your engineering simulations or prototype hardware.

Quantum Signal combines our RZEngine video game engine with your product ideas (e.g. a virtual control panel layout) or technologies (e.g. a vehicle dynamics model) to yield a “playable” simulation on a PC, Xbox, PS2, or other device.

This simulation is useful for studying system performance, collecting feedback from potential end users or customers, marketing a concept, training staff, and much more!

Mr. Matt Toschlog is a video game industry legend and built/lead Outrage Games before it was sold to THQ Entertainment in 2003. Matt was responsible for the multi-million selling worldwide hit Descent series of games, amongst others. Combining this expertise with expert programmers, artists, designers, and technologists yields simulation products that far exceed that seen in the engineering software industry today.

GTSI is a combined effort of the US Army, TARDEC and Quantum Signal to build tools for military vehicle integration and testing. The project, started in August 2004, has been highly successful, and the first demonstration application (“88 Mike”) was shown at both the 2004 Army Science Conference and the Spring 2005 Association of the United States Army show in 2005. Work continues on this project.

For more information, see the document/short video below:

GTSI Handout	Download GTSI Promotional Video LOW REZ GTSI Video 5.6 MB Hi REZ GTSI Video 46.9 MB

For more information, please contact Dr. Mitchell Rohde at 734-994-0028 x11, or email sim@quantumsignal.com. More information on our current gaming activities can be found at Reactor Zero.