It has been 10 years since two Israeli Air Force veterans founded SimiGon in Tel Aviv. Since then, the small software simulation company has been preaching the gospel of PC-based military training in a market dominated by large, fully immersive simulators. With persistence, SimiGon, which moved its headquarters and part of its research and development unit to the U.S. in 2004, has won over big firms, which have then used its SIMbox software to create pilot training packages for everything from CH-146 Griffons to F-16 Fighting Falcons.

In fact, many end-users in Canada, Australia, Belgium and other countries employ SIMbox as part of training solutions sold under different brand names. For example, Lockheed Martin Simulation, Training and Support, in Orlando, Fla., uses SIMbox as part of its NxSys integrated software suite that will drive a Pilot Training Aid (PTA) for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and the U.K. Military Flying Training System, a tri-service program to ready future British pilots.

When SimiGon first began hawking the concept of PC-based simulation for military training in 1998, few other vendors at the annual Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando, Fla., shared that vision. “People were doing stuff with Silicon Graphics computers and dedicated, high-fidelity simulation stuff,” said SimiGon director for business development Isar Meitis. “No one believed that a PC would give you a high enough fidelity to be worthwhile.”

Even then, the market was slowly shifting. Warren Wright, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin Simulation, Training and Support, notes that both the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the Iraq war created demand for quick retraining of troops. In addition, advances in technology made the development of image generators a painless task. “Now, you can go down to the store and buy a graphics card to do the same thing that, 10 or 15 years ago, would have required a giant room full of computers,” Wright said.

Indeed, shoot’em-up video games have driven the development of sophisticated computer hardware by demanding realistic graphics. It is this phenomenon on which the military PC-based simulation and training industry is piggybacking, said Nick Giannias, vice president of research and technology at Presagis, a CAE-owned modeling and simulation company based in Montreal. His company’s products can now interface with a game like “Virtual Battle Space 2,” designed by Bohemia Interactive.

As CPU power, graphics cards and disk space on data bases have improved, SimiGon has honed its product, then called AirBook. The first two versions of its simulation software were simple affairs — perhaps too simple. “Pretty fast we understood that simulation was not enough,” Meitis said. “There needs to be more behind it to provide some training value.” Accordingly, in 2004, SimiGon came out with its third version of AirBook, which included a basic learning management system.

Radical at the time, the learning management system enabled the trainer to distribute, over the Internet, various types of content — be they Word files, PDF documents or Flash media — to different trainees at specific times. Meitis offers the example of a pilot who needs to brush up on his instrument flying rules before the coming winter. “As soon as you log in, you have that lesson and a full-fidelity simulation of your aircraft waiting for you on your personal computer,” he said. As the pilot runs through the lesson, the learning management system tracks his performance.

In 2006, after moving beyond aviation simulation, SimiGon issued the fourth version of its software under a new name — KnowBook, with AirBook being downgraded to a subapplication along with GroundBook and MarineBook. In addition, KnowBook provided customers with a tool-kit to create generic 3-D graphics such as cockpit switches, define their operating logic and fine-tune those images for a particular platform. The tool kit can also create a virtual instructor to guide a trainee through made-up scenarios. “Everything we can do with the product, [clients] can do with the product,” Meitis said.

Why did KnowBook — in the fifth and most recent version, SIMbox — offer such an open architecture? Meitis gives two reasons. First, until 2004, SimiGon was Israeli and, therefore, it did not have access to classified information on U.S. weapons systems, which proved to be a major obstacle in creating superaccurate simulations. Second, the firm was too small to handle the required workload.

In the end, the alternate arrangement allowed SimiGon to leverage the ideas of its partners shared on its managed Web site Aero-Trade. “If you think about the think tank that’s involved in the development of SIMbox, it’s not the X amount of people at SimiGon,” he said. “It’s 100 times X, meaning all the people around the world that are using SIMbox, who are giving us ideas all the time.”

Due to their size, traditional full-mission simulators tend to be inconvenient, requiring trainees to schedule lessons in advance and spend time away from their squadrons for the duration of the training. In addition, many machines simply record student progress. “With 90 percent of simulators in the world today, you’ll be able to go back and see the logs — you flew this mission at that time, here are the comments you got from that mission — but there is no underlying infrastructure that can actually gather information from different training devices and provide analysis,” Meitis said.

By contrast, SIMbox does a better job of analyzing, he said. Student performance data is sent back to the central server, where software calculates whether the trainee is improving or making the same mistakes, and if so, it raises a red flag. It also looks at what skills the pilot is more proficient at and where he stands as compared to the rest of his class. Finally, it compares skills acquired to course objectives.

Of course, there are other top-notch learning management systems on the market today, some of them put out by companies such as Saba, Click2Learn and Outstart. But these rivals do not also create simulations. Likewise, other firms concentrate on graphics but only specialize in their construction or visualization. For example, Quantum3D delivers real-time image generation to both high-end flight simulators as well as unique man-portable computers for infantry training, but the firm does not design the software application commanding the graphics what to do.

Presagis offers a comprehensive and flexible suite of software. And unlike SimiGon’s line, Presagis products will play well in high-fidelity simulators as well as PCs, Giannias said. The firm’s Terra Vista and Creator programs create a PC-based virtual environment, while its STAGE and AI Implant populate that world with moving objects — sensors, vehicles and weapons — and intelligent people. Finally, its Vega Prime product allows the user to see all these graphics in action. However, the Presagis system does not offer a learning management system.

SimiGon got its start selling its early version AirBook to Israeli companies. The semipublic Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, for example, used the software program for weapons systems, pods and sensors training, while Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) cooperated with SimiGon on turning out a pilot debriefing system.

“They provided the hardware onboard the planes and so on,” Meitis said, “and we did the software that can play back everything they recorded.”

As the company and its product expanded, the training software spread to customers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Singapore and elsewhere. “The Portuguese, Belgian and Dutch air forces are using it to train F-16 pilots on everything from systems operation to tactical training,” he said. “Also, it’s used for decision-making training — what the simulation community calls ‘constructive training’ — as [in a] commander directing computer generated forces.”

However, few end-users know that they are working with SIMbox. That’s because SimiGon sells 95 percent of licenses to its partners, who resell the software, with their own added IP, under a new brand name. In essence, Meitis says, his company seeks to become the Microsoft Office of simulation — providing the platform and tools and letting the big boys author the documents.

In 2002, SimiGon began cooperating with Lockheed Martin Simulation, Training and Support. Over the next two years, the relationship deepened, leading to SIMbox’s integration within NxSys, a Lockheed Martin software suite. NxSys is the foundation of the F-35 of the Pilot Training Aid (PTA). According to Wright, “We anticipate that every pilot who will be receiving training at the academic facility will have access to the PTA.” Ultimately, that could mean as many as 1,000 PC-based simulators in use.

Jason McAlister is president of Wraith Systems, a Texas firm providing hardware to desktop trainers that has partnered with, among other companies, SimiGon. He describes SIMbox as a “flexible tool” with a “pretty nice guided tutorial,” well-suited for a sophisticated jet with a digital, 20-by-8-inch multifunctional display. In addition, SIMbox allows an instructor to create realistic threats and conditions, preparing the trainee for transition to a full-mission simulator and, eventually, the aircraft.

Indeed, Lockheed Martin intends for its PTA to serve only as a cost-effective supplement to a full-mission simulator. Lori Pridmore, STS technical director for business and advanced programs at Lockheed Martin, said F-35 trainees “are not going to get the same level of training that they would get in the full-mission simulator that will be produced at a much higher cost, but what it [the PTA] does is that,” by providing training time outside the more immersive simulators, “it reduces the amount of time they need in that full-mission simulator.”

Besides the F-35 program, Lockheed Martin formed a joint venture called Ascent with the VT Group, a British defense and services company, to provide desktop trainers using NxSys for portions of the U.K. Military Flying Training System. In March 2008, Ascent signed a 25-year-contract with the U.K. Ministry of Defence to provide triservice aircrew training, a deal worth an initial 635 million British pounds ($965 million) but expected to rise to 6 billion British pounds over the life of the program.

The initial advanced jet training program phase could, according to SimiGon company literature, net it $3.1 million.