Point Blank Simulator is a virtual training platform for firearms fundamentals.
Existing players in the market include LaserAmmo, LaserShot, Meggitt, VirTra, MILO (Smart Simulators) covering multiple tiers from home and commercial use to law enforcement and military.
Market research showed 3 consistent complaints about existing systems.
Capital Expense:
Consumer systems starting at £10-15K Mil/LEO procurement starting £100-150K
Limited and Expensive Content:
3D modules are limited functionality in the hundreds of dollars range, video content in the thousands of dollars range.
Immersive Experience:
Poor quality graphics on very old gaming technology or jittery video splicing.
All virtual range require at least 4 components:
– training (enabled) firearm
– computer to run the application for every 60 degrees viewing angle
– projector and screen/surface
– shot detection camera & software
Capital Expense
Point Blank Simulator can work as a “plugin” for other training platforms like Sim Range or Smokeless Range or as a standalone application with our USB 2 or USB 3.1 cameras and shot detection software. The USB 2 shot detection software is available for all range instance accounts and will work with any USB 2 camera that has a switchable 700nm IR long pass filter. The Point Blank Simulator USB 2.0 camera is £250
The Point Blank Simulator range application requires a modern gaming PC running Windows 8.2 or higher.
Content
Other platforms distribute content in pre-compiled packages that need to be downloaded and installed individually. Point Blank Simulator is a series of training environments that allow the user to dynamically load courses of fire into those environments.
We have a warm-up area consisting of a single static target placeable from 3-300m and a dynamic target area that allows the used to adjust multiple parameters for 1-10 targets from size to movement speed and presentation time.
We currently have several content streams:
– Plinking (entertainment shooting)
– Drills (repeated courses of fire)
– CTE Drills (Critial Task Evaluation Drills)
– Competition (IPSC with more to come)
Our content model allows us to generate and modify content without having to update the base platform while still allowing us to filter access depending on the user role or organization. Additional courses of fire are added to our standard and premium streams and user generated content from our course editor can be consumed into the system. We are have a pipeline set up to import course definitions from Sketch Up, which is commonly used for course diagrams.
Immersive Experience
Existing platforms “run on rails” automatically advancing the shooter rather that requiring the shooter to make a discernment that the area is clear before proceeding to the next firing position. Shooters are able to review their course of fire and see where their rounds landed.
Shooters are able to initiate movement by a number of different mechanisms from keyboard to game controller to pressure switches.
The Point Blank Simulator Gesture Egress Transition MOdel (GETMO) motion capture system uses off the shelf hardware from Xbox Kinect (2+) or other point cloud systems ranging between £150-400.
Data
Being data driven not only gives us a more flexible and cost effective content platform than anything else on the market, it allows us to things like feed real load data into our ammunition definitions and capture shooter data like the firearm used, it’s ready condition and the shooter’s starring position.
We anticipated the need for serious shooters to manage their training data. Without data there is no clear record of how a shooter is performing over time. With Point Blank Simulator you don’t just have data for the last 100 shots, every shot the shooter takes is recorded with multiple ways to view your shot data from score summaries and visualizations to a shot timeline for each course of fire and allowing comparison between courses of fire.
Timelines allow the shooter to see a high level summary of course of fire showing the target score zone for each shot and allows the user to zoom in to see split & elapsed times, target score along with MantisX data (when available).