Laser Pointer-Ray Projection and Collision Detection for 3-Dimensional Shooting Simulator

Nowadays, in police agencies and the military, shooting simulators are widely used to reduce the risk of danger due to operational errors and limited situational simulation. Several studies have proposed shooting simulators for shooting accuracy on paper targets or 2-dimensional (2D) while 3-dimensional (3D) shooting simulators can support specific situation-based training such as ambush and rescue scenarios with dynamic target movements. The previous research only discussed 3D shooting simulators by the general of the architecture and a glimpse of bullet trajectory but does not involve azimuth angle so shooting simulations cannot be carried out at several different horizontal angles. This research proposed in more detail the formula for calculating laser pointer-ray projection based on elevation and azimuth angles as well as collision detection. The results of the experiment showed that 47% of the shooting hit the small target from different horizontal angles whereas in the previous method, only 8% hit the target due to not involving azimuth angles. The shooting of the proposed method did not hit the target is caused by the small dimensions of the target made it difficult to aim for long distances. As such, the proposed method can enhance the variety of shooting training.