Catastrophic approach to satellite imagery utilization on network-based flight simulators

Presently, there are many technological and industrial efforts for development of virtual flight simulators, usually based on networked technologies. In order to solve the problems of real time availability and realistic quality of simulators, source data images and digital terrain models (DTM) should have some generalized structure, which supposes different imagery resolution and different amount of detail on each level of 3-D simulation. One of the central problems is geotruthing of satellite imagery with realistic accuracy requirements with respect to DTM. Traditionally such geotruthing can be achieved by means of geo control points measurements. This process is labor intensive and requires special photogrammetric operator skills. In order to avoid such a process an algorithm of terrain and image models singularity's recognition based on Catastrophe theory is investigated in this paper. This approach does not require training but operates with direct comparison of the analytical manifolds from DTM with those actually extracted from the image. The technology described in this paper, the "Catastrophe Approach", and algorithms of satellite imagery treatment may be implemented in a multi-level image pyramid flight simulators. Theoretical approaches and practical realization indicates that the Catastrophe Approach is easy-to-use for a final customer and can be implemented on-line to networked flight simulators.