As modern military and civil training programs demand ever more realistic and location-accurate virtual environments, terrain generation has become a critical bottleneck. But emerging techniques—including drone-based photogrammetry—are changing the game.
A new paper titled “Drone Surveys for Rapid 3D Terrain in Simulation and Training” explores this evolving area of simulation technology, highlighting how drone-captured imagery can be transformed into simulation-ready 3D environments quickly, cost-effectively, and with minimal manual intervention.
The Terrain Challenge
Creating detailed and geospecific terrain has long been a time-consuming task involving expensive LiDAR surveys, hand-built models, and lengthy conversion pipelines. In fast-paced training environments—especially in defense and emergency response—this delay can become a serious operational constraint.
As the paper outlines, drone-based surveys offer a flexible alternative that can be used to generate photorealistic terrains in a fraction of the time. These data sets can then be automatically processed into 3D models using modern simulation terrain tools.
How Mantle Fits In
At BISim, we’ve designed Mantle specifically to accelerate this terrain generation process. Mantle allows users to ingest high-resolution geospatial data—like that collected from drone surveys—and convert it into simulation-ready environments for VBS4, Unreal Engine, Unity, JSAF, and more.
With automation pipelines, streaming support, and integrated data fusion, Mantle minimizes the manual steps required to transform raw drone data into tactical training terrain. The process is measured in hours, not days or weeks, making it ideal for dynamic and operationally relevant training needs.
Explore the Full Paper
If you’re exploring ways to enhance your terrain generation workflows or just want to see what’s possible with current drone survey technology, we highly recommend reading the full paper:
Learn more about Mantle and how BISim is enabling rapid, real-world terrain creation for mission rehearsal and training.