Umbra

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Umbra Contact
umbra@sandia.gov
(505) 844-3621

We offer a range of services in simulation, assessment, and analysis focused upon our customer’s success.

• Simulation and Gaming Terrain Team (SGTT)
• Training and use of our tools
• Analysis using our tools
• Custom application development
• Use of Umbra for your projects

Simulation and Gaming Terrain Team (SGTT)

download factsheet pdf

Sandia’s SGTT provides simulation-ready, analysis-quality terrains & knowledgeable support for national security applications. Real and notional terrains are a vital backdrop and data set for national security projects during simulation, exploration, and visualization of security concepts. Without terrains, analysts and decision makers cannot grasp needed information, operate efficiently, and many simulations cannot operate. Terrain development is a complex matter requiring a variety of expensive software, powerful hardware, and years of experience to master the domain. Sandia established the SGTT as a resource to create a reliable resource for terrain development and improve the process of obtaining terrains.

Services

• 3-D terrain creation
• Real terrain (site specific, special ops, location not easily accessed)
• Data sources (DTED, Lidar, DEM, Arc ASCII Grid ...)
• Model building
• Virtual prototypes
• Workspace prototypes
• Buildings, people, vehicles, vegetation, water
• Notional terrain development
• Terrain repository & archiving
• Gaming environments
• Effects rendering

You may contact the Simulation and Gaming Terrain Team directly at sgtt@sandia.gov.

Analysis Using Umbra and Our Other Tools

We often help our customers by providing technical analysis for their needs using modeling and simulation, including Umbra. Deliverables may include analytic results, simulations, visualizations, data sets, and recommendations. We use existing software and hardware tools or apply custom development if appropriate. Other competencies and capabilities across Sandia National Laboratory are applied as needed to provide the most efficient and effective solution.

Training for Use of Existing Applications, Such as Dante or OpShed

We provide our existing tools with training, facilities, and capability to customers when they wish to perform some or all of the effort themselves. We adjust or modify the tools for specific needs. Deliverables include our existing tools modified if needed, training, and consulting to bring success to your effort. We can provide on-site help with these products.

Custom Umbra Application Development

When an existing tool does not quite fit the need, or research and development is needed to accomplish objectives, we will engineer custom capability with the Umbra and other software and hardware tools. Significant value is added by leveraging legacy capability within Umbra and other programs and products at Sandia National Laboratories. Deliverables include the customized capability as well as documentation, training, and consulting needed to meet your objectives.

Use the Umbra Framework to Create Your Own Applications

When customers wish to develop applications in Umbra themselves, we can provide the Umbra Simulation Framework directly to them. Umbra is available by license and is free for U.S. government agencies and sometimes to those under contract with the U.S. Government. It has been distributed to universities and some industry partners; however, Umbra is export controlled. Deliverables usually include Umbra, and training is often required to bring customers up to speed. If needed, we can also provide consulting or co-development of some parts of the Umbra effort to ensure customer success. Support is provided through updates, bug reporting, and user group community activities. See the Contact page for more about this support. Sandia is not mission-funded to support Umbra, so any significant support usually requires funding.

You might consider these concepts when thinking about value of Umbra for your application:

• Past application emphasis and capability:
  • Umbra is a great integration framework that can effectively tie together other tools and hardware systems.
  • Sandia’s focus and emphasis for Umbra has been on precision analysis issues over visual beauty, although visual reality can be incorporated if needed.
  • Umbra has introspective abilities during simulation execution.
  • Umbra is both a time-stepped and event driven simulation.
  • Umbra allows Live-Virtual-Constructive (LVC) applications.
  • Umbra can support co-simulation or federation (HLA, DIS, TENA).
  • Umbra is not a game engine, but can work with some game engines.
  • Umbra has modeled vehicles (ground, sea, air), sensors, buildings (exterior/interior), humans, communications, physical-cyber effects, viewsheds, and weapons.
  • Terrain/environments that are small to 100s of square Kilometers
• Applications that may be well suited to Umbra:
  • Where you wish to spend time solving your problem, not building a framework.
  • Umbra is a complex adaptive systems (CASoS) engineering and analysis tool.
  • Embodied agent systems – those where the environment of the agent is key to mission or operations.
  • Dante tool applications (see products page)
  • OpShed tool applications (see products page)
  • Robotics
  • Applications where quick tactical (weeks-months) simulation development is key and changes to those simulations is important (hours-days)
• Applications that may not be optimal to fully render in Umbra:
  • Light-weight large-scale agent-based modeling
  • Particle/fluid dynamics, finite element analysis, or other high performance computing applications
• Computing environment:
  • Umbra is a C++ environment, C# for GUI, Tkl.
  • Umbra has 32-bit and 64-bit builds.
  • Umbra works on laptops, desktops, through clusters.
  • Umbra is primarily supported on PC platforms, but also works on Linux and MAC platforms.
  • Supports parallel distributed processing
  • Increasing level of multi-threaded code and GPU support
• Documentation & Training:
  • Documentation for Umbra is not yet formalized
  • Multiple training classes exist for Umbra
  • Umbra is not shrink-wrapped software
• Use & Licensing:
  • Umbra is export controlled, EAR99.
  • Umbra is "free" for U.S. Government use, sometimes including those under contract with the U.S. Government.
  • Umbra is licensable to universities and industry.

Web site contact: umbra@sandia.gov

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