Real‐time aircraft radar simulator for a navy training system

A real‐time aircraft radar simulation applied in naval training is presented. The implemented algorithm works on a 3D synthesized environment, described by large sets of polygons—a typical scene can have a million of triangles—and the lobe is discretized with a cluster of rays. The radar display is recreated solving fast ray–polygon intersections (a variation of Ray‐Shooting), and mapping them on the screen. This work proposes a new polygonal simplification method and a geometric classification algorithm in order to solve the intersections efficiently. This methodology leads to high fidelity images and real‐time radar simulation, which operates at the specified 15 revolutions per minute rate. The results were tested with trained aircraft pilots.