The Story of VR-Forces

by Deb Fullford, VP Sales

Back in 1999 when the world was busy worrying about Y2K, John Morrison, one of MAK’s co-founders, was worrying about how to design a flexible computer-generated forces application that could accurately simulate platforms and be easily extended to incorporate new functionality... 

He was also worrying about MAK’s other co-founder, Warren Katz, and the pressure to release VR-Forces before I/ITSEC. (Oh, what fun I/ITSEC planning meetings those were 😊.)

The approach that John and other MAKers, Tim Langevin, MAK’s first Director of Engineering, and Len Granowetter, MAK’s current CTO, agreed upon was to release an initial version that contained a solid, well-architected, and robust C++ API with minimally viable functionality. The first MVP! 

As MAK’s current VP of Sales, I would like to thank John, Tim, and Len for their keen insights and smart decisions made over friendly discussions throughout 1999. Their concept of a plug-in-architecture has enabled MAK customers and partners to add their own high-fidelity content directly into VR-Forces — providing a seamless experience to the end user. You can see examples of this in CogSim’s TDL for VR-Forces (request to watch the recent TDL for VR-Forces webinar to learn more), Cervus’ HIVE for VR-Forces (pictured below), and RT Dynamic’s EWAWS (learn more about that by requesting to watch our recent webinar “Adding High Fidelity Electronic Warfare (EW) to your MAK ONE Air Environment,” featuring RT Dynamics).