Unlike the U.S., The Netherlands does not have research organizations directly under their Defense Department. This research, along with civilian sponsored research, is performed in the 5,000 person TNO, spread over some 25 different laboratories. TNO receives about half of its funding from the government and the remainder from contracts with industry and other funding organizations. This group focuses on visual simulation, machine vision, autonomous systems, and a recently started effort in virtual reality. The first simulator is a trainer for firing a stinger missile at an incoming aircraft.
Picture generation is performed by projecting the scenery onto a large dome.
The simulator allows looking in all directions but the tank does not move. Background images are precomputed and integrated with target information. The computer hardware is an in-house developed 120 transputer system. A new prototype simulator processes both objects and background with unrestricted movements and enhanced realism. This system uses 10 to 100 Intel I860 processors.