Saab selects DiSTI’s VE Studio platform for virtual training development

The DiSTI Corporation, a provider of 3D virtual training solutions, announced that Saab, a manufacturer of innovative airborne systems, has selected DiSTI’s VE Studio to build a virtual maintenance trainer (VMT) for the company’s Gripen E aircraft. This selection is the result of a multi-year evaluation process where Saab reviewed numerous technology platforms and development methodologies. Saab selected VE Studio on the basis that it will enable them to create and manage immersive virtual training faster than other methods while significantly reducing their development costs.

Mission demands and enemy threats are rapidly evolving, and the Gripen E is designed to keep pace by addressing those needs with advanced technological features and upgradability while reducing the customer’s cost of ownership as the air frame is adapted over time.

Similarly, Markus Jellinek, technical project manager of Saab explains: “We selected VE Studio for its ability to enable our team to quickly create and make changes to the training material without having to redevelop the software’s code base or having to expand our existing team. These elements, combined with DiSTI’s flexible licensing model, allows us to scale up or down as our program requires, will save us significant delivery time, give us the flexibility to adapt to customer demands, add new features such as virtual and augmented reality and control our costs even further.”

VE Studio is a commercially available virtual training development platform that uses a database-driven approach and combined end-to-end automated tools to simplify and speed the creation of virtual training solutions based on the Unity rendering engine. Leveraging VE Studio, the Gripen E project management team will be able to train their existing staff, many of whom are not software developers, to use the platform for creating the aircraft’s VMT. This provides them complete control of the training content throughout the aircraft’s lifecycle, allowing them to rapidly adapt to engineering, equipment and procedural changes that take place during the initial deployment, through flight trials, into final customer delivery and beyond.

DiSTI’s Chief Revenue Officer, John Cunningham highlights: “Saab is a long-time customer and currently uses our GL Studio HMI tool for developing virtual instrumentation in simulators. We are pleased that they have also selected VE Studio to develop the new Gripen E virtual maintenance trainer. Saab can now take advantage of that technology and (its) processes to develop their own virtual maintenance training content at a fraction of the time and cost (of) using traditional manual development processes.”