Course Development

The only full-featured courseware authoring tool in the industry.

You’ve heard the saying “content is king”—but in training, it’s relevant content that truly matters.

Traditionally, agencies had to depend on manufacturers for courseware—often at a premium—because creating custom content required specialized skills, equipment, and significant time investment.

DART changes that. It empowers you to build your own drills, courses, and scenarios—and more importantly, it makes the process fast, intuitive, and accessible.

Target Editor

The target editor feature of DART is used to adjust settings for 3D targets, flat targets, and reactive targets, such as the number of hits to fall, reset time, target sounds, and score values. Targets can then be saved and used in practice sessions or shared with other DART users.

Studio

Studio is an optional program for creating virtually any type of drill, course, or scenario you can imagine. Easily add traditional targets, human characters, realistic environments, video, object behaviors, and more. There has never been a more complete solution for designing and building courseware than Studio.

Share Your Courses

DART makes it easy to share courses with others. This distinctive feature allows the seamless transfer of courses developed by your team to locations in the next county or another country. In return, your team gains access to valuable courses developed and shared by fellow DART users from around the globe.

Step One

Place your objects in the scene.

Start by opening the library and selecting objects for your course. There are more than a dozen object types and hundreds of individual objects to choose from, including flat targets, reactive targets, human characters, video objects, props, lights, cameras, and more. DART uses a simple drag-and-drop approach so placing objects couldn’t be easier.

  • Flat Targets – familiar 2D silhouette targets for qualification courses and drills

  • 3D Targets – silhouette targets mounted to realistic stands – some with motion

  • Reactive Targets – 3D targets with built-in scoring zones and physics

  • AI Targets™ – 2D and 3D targets with embedded motions and behaviors
  • 3D Models – import your own 3D models and scanned environments
  • Images – 2D photos and pics perfect for backgrounds and course directions

  • TruTargets™ – realistic humans with behaviors and mortality settings

  • Video Targets – innovative video clips of people with poses, motion, and behaviors

  • Video Scenarios – full-screen video experiences within the 3D simulation

  • Groups – combinations of objects that can be saved and moved together
  • Timers – user-defined stopwatches that can measure any series of events
  • Scorecards – display the score of a target or an entire stage

  • Props – Building blocks used to recreate realistic settings and locations

  • Lights – featuring multiple light types capable of recreating any lighting condition

  • Environments – photorealistic interior and outdoor settings for targets and people

  • Viewpoints – cameras that can be freely moved, adjusted, and controlled
  • Decals – images used for anything from course instructions to road signage

Step Two

Adjust object settings.

Once objects have been placed in your scene, use the Settings panel to change their attributes. Each object type has its own characteristics. For example, a Texas star has settings for the number of elements, required hits to drop an element, points, and sound when an element is shot. Human characters have mortality settings including ‘hits to wound’ and ‘hits to kill’, which can vary depending on the point of impact. Setting controls are easy to change using the mouse.

Step Three

Add motion to your objects.

With DART, any object can move around the screen by assigning it a path. Paths are built using a series of waypoints. Because any object can have its own path, you are free to move targets, people, props, lights, and cameras – and once you know how to create and edit paths, you can use the exact same process to make anything in your scene move.

Step Four

For the final touch add lighting and behaviors.

Course objects can be further customized with behaviors and rules. Behaviors are particularly powerful cause-and-effect options that change an object or course setting when specific actions are taken within and outside the simulation. For example, people in a crowd can run when gunshots are heard.

Flat Targets

DART comes with more than 100 familiar silhouette targets, and you can add your own.

Poppers

Choose from basic metal poppers to the most widely used military targets.

Stars and More

DART also includes many targets with built-in motion and physics such as Texas stars, Roger’s Range targets, plate racks, and swingers.

Exclusives

These are just a few of the many features that you won’t find on any other firearm simulator.

The objects and environments in Studio are like building blocks that you can use to build virtually anything imaginable. Most of the time, this may take the form of qualification courses and drills. Other times, you may want to focus on situational awareness. The point is that DART will not limit you. Here are a few examples of courseware that would simply be impossible to create on any other system.

Video+

Video content is not only possible in Studio – it’s supercharged. Because everything is integrated in a 3D world, video can be shown full screen or in a window. DART takes video even further by allowing video characters, like the instructor in this example, to operate in a 3D world.

A Different Perspective

Control your view with cameras. Easily move the shooting position from prone, kneeling, standing – to forty feet in the air. Not only can you create and control any number of cameras in a scene, but each human character can act as a camera, so you can see the action from anyone’s perspective.

Open World

Environments in DART are virtually unlimited in size and scope. This allows the creation of scenarios that can replicate large outdoor or indoor areas.

Scanned Data

DART can import scanned data taken with a phone or drone and stitched together as a 3D model. This allows you to train in an exact replica of your surroundings.