VBS UK Dataset: choose terrain fidelity around the exercise

A national exercise needs terrain that remains useful as the scenario moves between locations. The training team also has to fit that terrain onto the available machines and leave enough capacity for the rest of the simulation. Selecting the highest resolution everywhere can add cost without improving the decisions participants are practising.

AIC VBS UK Dataset provides three prepared UK-wide terrain tiers. Customers can select the elevation and imagery resolution that fits the exercise, hardware and visual requirements. The product is available now for demonstrations, including discussion of the terrain and performance profile your training environment needs.

Three tiers with a common national context

The low-fidelity tier uses elevation at 20 metres per sample and imagery at 10 metres per pixel. The medium tier uses elevation at 10 metres per sample and imagery at 5 metres per pixel. The high tier uses approximately 2 to 5 metres per sample elevation and imagery at 2 metres per pixel.

Each tier includes vector uplift from multiple sources, with handcrafted refinement where it improves the training terrain. Elevation, imagery and vectors serve different purposes: ground form, visual reference and features such as roads and settlements. The evaluation should examine their combined effect on the exercise rather than judge the dataset on imagery resolution alone.

The prepared tiers allow organisations to work from a consistent UK setting while choosing different detail levels for different tasks. A broad scenario and a closely observed local activity need not carry identical terrain requirements. The selection should follow what instructors and participants must be able to see and do.

Start with the training question

For an intelligence training team, a terrain requirement should say what judgement or workflow the exercise is intended to test. Participants may need to interpret terrain, understand a reporting location or compare information arriving from different sources. The geography has to support that task at the scale at which it will be assessed.

Instructors can then identify the features that must be represented clearly. A road network may matter across a large area; a particular route or local landmark may require closer inspection. Recording these needs before selecting a tier prevents a visually impressive demonstration from becoming the only acceptance criterion.

The same discipline helps international teams preparing for exercises in a UK setting. The dataset supplies geographic context. Exercise objectives, current reference information and instructor judgement determine how that context should be used. A synthetic representation should be assessed against the training requirement it is expected to support.

Add local detail where the exercise needs it

The national dataset can be combined with separate VBS UK Training Areas. Those inserts provide more detailed representations of principal UK military training areas, using a 2 metre digital terrain model, 0.5 metre per pixel imagery, updated vectors and refinement.

This gives the buyer two related decisions: the national terrain needed for the wider scenario and the locations needing greater detail. Ask AIC to demonstrate the proposed combination in the intended VBS environment. Confirm coverage, available areas and package compatibility as part of the scope.

Where an exercise also needs external software, hardware or telemetry, SYNAPSE addresses the simulation integration boundary. Terrain content and system integration should be specified separately, then tested together where the scenario depends on both.

Keep delivery and use within your environment

VBS UK Dataset is supplied as licensed simulation content for the customer’s approved VBS estate. It has no dependency on an AIC-hosted runtime service. The delivered terrain can remain within the training environment under the customer’s own handling, storage and distribution controls.

Agree the permitted installations, distribution arrangements and update process before deployment. The package licence and the underlying VBS environment are separate parts of the procurement discussion. Customer access controls, endpoint security and storage protection continue to apply to the delivered content.

This is relevant where classrooms or collective training networks operate without an external connection. The demonstration should establish how the content will reach the approved environment and how instructors will identify the terrain version used for a particular exercise.

Compare tiers on the machines that will run them

Choose representative locations and exercise conditions. Inspect ground form, imagery and relevant vector features in each shortlisted tier. Measure storage requirements, loading behaviour and simulation performance on the intended hardware with the planned scenario running. Terrain should be tested alongside the other demands on the system.

Ask instructors to record whether the required features are clear enough for the learning objective. Record omissions and uncertainties as well as useful detail. The VBS UK Dataset terrain evaluation offers an illustrative assessment that can be adapted to those criteria.

Put terrain preparation in the cost comparison

Prepared national content can avoid commissioning the same geographic groundwork separately for each programme. The commercial comparison should include dataset licensing, any additional refinement, distribution work and the hardware required to run the selected tier. Higher resolution should earn its cost through a defined training need.

AIC’s wider Constellation and mission-software guide explains where simulation content sits alongside intelligence and engineering capabilities. For scenario design or estate support, examine AIC simulation services.

Book a VBS UK Dataset demonstration with your VBS version, hardware profile, locations and training objectives. AIC can then show relevant terrain, compare the available tiers and scope the content your exercise needs.