The MAK ONE Road to Release

We've been working on some awesome architectural changes, which we'll begin releasing in Spring 2022. And there are some capabilities that we've been working on for the past few releases that are pretty well rounded out at this point. Instead of holding those until next spring, we're going to have a mid-year release this fall. Look forward to a MAK ONE Fall 2021 release announcement in the next month! If you haven't already, sign up for product release announcements here.

Here's a sneak peek at the next generation of the MAK ONE product architecture:

• One of the most exciting changes coming to the Spring 2022 MAK ONE release is the addition of Behavior Trees to the VR-Forces Sim Engine. This advancement helps users create scenarios with more complex behaviors involving more entities with less effort by scenario developers. We're adding visualization tools to help develop, verify, and manage these complex behaviors. We'll apply these new tools and techniques to platoons of ground vehicles, but the architecture is designed to be used in all domains.
• In VR-Vantage, we are refactoring how users of the API configure their models and we are removing protocol dependencies. This means that API users will be able to write visualizers without worrying about what protocol will be using it — adding new protocols won't require new work on the model and there will be no performance impacts. Another thread of VR-Vantage capabilities has been our focus on high-fidelity visual models that look good up close and personal and will include better wheels, treds, and rotor animations. These animations are computed in the rendering engine regardless of what software simulated the entities and what protocol conveyed them across the network.
• In terms of interoperability, we added a new protocol, MAK Legion, designed for scalability. This protocol will allow the communication of unprecedented numbers of entities across the network.
• We're using one of the core components of the Legion architecture, the multi-threaded "Data Store Library" to enable VR-Forces to take better advantage of multi-core processors. This will significantly increase the number of entities that can be simulated in each VR-Forces Sim Engine. We've previously made architectural improvements in the VR-Vantage rendering engine to be able to visualize increasing numbers of entities.

These architectural improvements are focused in a few specific areas that benefit simulation, visualization, and interoperability in dramatic ways. The changes however are localized so that most of the interfaces and ways you use VR-Forces, VR-Vantage, VR-Engage, and the Link products will not change. But the internal changes will have a big impact.

Look forward to a preview of these exciting enhancements in MAK Live! seminars and in-person at I/ITSEC in Orlando this fall. And as always, reach out to us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with your questions!