Comparison of ’Fog of War’ models in digital wargames : Using Entity-Component-System architecture and ArcGIS

Abstract: Fog of War is a term for uncertainty in situational awareness. Fog of War is an essential part of a wargame which causes the participating units’ perception of the environment to be distorted and altered. Introducing a certain amount of uncertainty helps to better mimic the situation on the battlefield. Fog of War comes in multiple forms and levels, whereas the visual detection level is of primary interest for this thesis. Two forms of visual detection have been implemented to simulate a simple and advanced form of Fog of War. The simple level is based solely on the distance between two units, while the advanced level determines whether two units possess a clear line of sight between them, to decisively add realism to a played scenario. The two models were created based on the Entity Component System software architecture, and the maps used for the wargame were based on data from ArcGIS. Extensive testing of the two models, for different types of terrains, show good performance and computational efficiency, however with the expected caveat that flat landscape requires significantly more processing power and memory capacity than a hilly terrain.