The Traffic Accident Reconstruction Origin -ARnews-

Re: Any ATB users out there?

brian (mchenry@interpath.com)
Tue, 13 Aug 1996 21:27:56 -0400 (EDT)

This is in response for a request for information on DYNAMAN:

DYNAMAN began apparently as a PC version of the CVS/ATB program.
The Air Force awarded GEYSAC a special contract to port the program to the PC.
The program and contract were written such that neither the program nor the documentation
is available to the public.(old Reaganomics for ya)
EXCEPT if you buy the executable program and only then you get the program and the users manual.
No technical referenece manual of any merit.
(When I requested further documentation from GEYSAC (I spoke to N.Rangarajan Ronga )
and he said they couldn't release any because it would be 'giving away the store'.

The authors of DYNAMAN have also made many additional changes to the CVS/ATB code since the
original contact independent of the govt sponsorship.
We have been hired to evaluate applications run by individuals using the DYNAMAN VER 3.0
and have found the results to differ dramatically in many instances from the current version
of the CVS/ATB IV.3 as distributed by the Air Force. In particular the algorithms controlling the
hyper-ellisoid contacts (and therefore the predicted HIC values) have been changed.

So our client purchased version 3.0 of DYNAMAN to permit evaluation.
When we re-ran what the other side had run on their version 3.0 of DYNAMAN we got
different predicted results with our version 3.0????
When we asked GEYSAC why and what they said they did not know exactly what
they had changed but that the CVS/ATB had 'many bugs' which they were continually fixing
and that you could identify the version by the date of the executable.
(It's a DOS program)
hmmmm...why not stamp the programs as ver 3.1 or ver 3.01...etc.??
I believe they now may have a version 4.0 out there.

It is distributed by:
GEYSAC
Rte 2
Box 339A
Kearneysville W.Va. 25430

There is also a ATB/CVS users group organized by the Air Force
unfortunately the address and contact info is at another location.
e-mail me or post a request and I'll respond with contact information.

brian

brian
mchenry@interpath.com