<title>Thermal model for real-time textured IR background simulation</title>

Abstract

In the last year, several moderately-priced real-time image generators offering textured rendering have appeared on the market. These image generators provide an opportunity for more realistic IR image simulation by significantly increasing the level of detail of the simulated image with no degradation in real-time performance. As part of the development of a new imaging IR simulator, we have incorporated the texturing feature of our image generator with our thermal model to generate thermally accurate textured IR backgrounds. Our textured thermal model uses a twodimensional Markov process to generate a background temperature fluctuation map; this model has been proposed by several studies of thermal IR terrain measurements. The textured surfaces are processed through our radiance and sensor models to generate the simulated images.