GRILL personnel participated as SMEs in the United States Air Force (USAF) AFWERX Super Goggle Challenge to explore solutions for high-performance, multi-capable extended reality head mounted displays (XR HMD). Dr. Wink Bennett, Dr. Summer Rebensky, and Mr. Quintin Oliver provided expertise on hardware design, data collection, and output capabilities for research. The challenge had three focus areas:

• Architecture, prioritizing compatibility with open XR standards as well as flexible and modular upgrade and integration capability.

• User experience, emphasizing cutting-edge visual capabilities, control of visual perception of time of day, ease of use across multiple Department of Defense branches, and use cases with durations of up to 3 hours.

• Hardware for the HMD, considering technical requirements (e.g., refresh rate, field of view, resolution), comfort, tracking accuracy, upgradability, and Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) compatibility.

In 2022, the GRILL collaborated with the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) to establish GRILL WEST. Working with the USAFA faculty, cadets are identified who will travel to the Dayton GRILL facility for their Cadet Summer Research Program (CSRP) assignment. These cadets work on a challenge problem for their capstone project senior year, which result in awards, publications, and integration of a project into a core course. Cadets also work with the GRILL West site during the academic year to expand upon summer efforts. Several projects have come from this collaboration. 

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Located at Wright State University, Calamityville allows military and government collaborators and first responders to train skills, test new technology, and conduct research in a realistic yet controlled environment. The GRILL has partnered with Calamityville on several initiatives, including:

• A digital twin of Calamityville as an environmental Unreal plugin, created as an easy integration with high visual fidelity and scalability.

• Blended Training Demo Days, demonstrating the capabilities of game engine technology and partnership between Wright State and the GRILL. The Demo Day featured the Calamityville digital twin integrated with the Mixed-reality Environment Advanced Threat Simulator, GRILL Open-Dis Plugin, Cesium round earth model for Unreal, and the virtual reality parachute simulator. 

• A visualization of performance enabled operational training environment (PEOTE) concept, incorporating the Calamityville digital twin and other locations created in Unreal to showcase synthetic light detection and ranging (LiDAR) scanner.

• A project that blends Calamityville and GRILL assets in a live, virtual, and constructive (LVC) scenario with multiple actors and sims interacting with each other using the Open-DIS Plugin. This project is also used in the Mixed-reality Environment Advanced Threat Simulator to display network traffic (e.g., real-life vehicles driving, virtual air vehicles flying, chalk explosions, a gas-powered .50-caliber gun) using Unreal Engine with 3D models in a high-fidelity environment.