Abstract: In order to develop real-time collision detection module of coastline in navigation simulator, a mesh preprocessing method for coastline data is applied. The principle of meshing is established and the coastline data is meshed based on the clipping algorithm. The mesh data is stored into an appropriate data structure. The collision detection algorithm and test program are developed based on Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC). The ship contour points and the mesh expansion method are applied to avoid error in special cases which could also improve the accuracy of collision detection. The results show that the method reduces much time compared with the method of traversing the coastline directly, which ensures the real-time performance of the program. The accuracy of the detection algorithm is high, which could enhance the behavior and physical realism of the navigation simulator as a virtual reality system.

Key words: navigation simulator, virtual reality, collision detection, real-time