Today we’re excited to announce the release of Falcon 5.1, a focused update that brings several user experience and workflow enhancements based on our work with customers and EDU users. While the complete list of changes is detailed in our release notes, in this blog we’re highlighting a few of the impactful improvements:

• New UI and workflow enhancements
• New digital twins in our public catalog
• Upcoming classes and learning sessions

Note: For a comprehensive list of all changes and improvements, please refer to the Falcon 5.1 release notes.

Key UI Enhancements in Falcon 5.1

Falcon Launcher: A Central Dashboard for All Falcon Products

We believe that powerful simulation tools should also be user friendly—this is why today we’re introducing Falcon Launcher: the central interface for accessing all the vital elements of the Falcon product suite. Making the launcher available to all of our customers has been a top UI goal since the debut of FalconEditor, and it marks a key milestone in the evolution of the Falcon user experience.

Falcon Launcher comes standard with FalconEditor 5.1, and supports:

• Quick scenario and project navigation – Easily browse scenarios and projects.
• Instant scenario creation and simulation – Directly create new, or, open existing scenarios, and launch simulations.
• Access to documentation, educational and onboarding content – Quickly find supporting EDU materials and onboarding resources.
• Unreal Mode access in FalconEditor – Launch Unreal Mode directly from FalconLauncher for a seamless transition to digital twin creation workflows.

See Falcon Launcher in action:

Streamlined Outliner for More Intuitive Scenario Configuration

Falcon 5.1 introduces improvements to the Scenario Outliner, making it more intuitive than ever to navigate the hierarchies of scenarios and digital twins without the need to manually edit USD. Improvements include:

• Simplified scenario outline – Now fully mirrors the scenario USD for better clarity and navigation.
• Improved twin breakdown – Enables intuitive understanding of digital twin relationships in the scenario and any scope that the user is currently modifying.
• Streamlined Control in Multi-System Twin Scenarios – In complex scenarios, users often need to switch between multiple concurrently operating system twins and their corresponding portal views while running a simulation. With Falcon 5.1, changing between system twins is as simple as selecting the desired twin from a drop-down menu, enabling seamless control and a more intuitive workflow.

See the Outliner workflows below:

This is just a sample of the enhancements that make Falcon 5.1 the most accessible and user-focused digital twin platform to date. We’re excited to bring these improvements to our community and, as always, look forward to hearing from our users as we continue evolving Falcon to better meet their needs.

Digital Twin Catalog Expansions in Falcon 5.1

Falcon’s Digital Twin Catalog continues to grow, offering a vast library of free, high-fidelity digital twins—including environment, system, and item twins—ready for immediate use in Falcon simulations. The digital twins offered in the FalconCloud catalog are:

• Free & Sim-Ready – Download and leverage these digital twins immediately in your scenarios.
• Portable Across a Wide Range of Simulation and Visualization Solutions – Since Duality’s digital twins are created using the open Digital Twin Encapsulation Standard (DTES), they are not locked into any specific tool or use case, and can be leveraged to address a wide array of simulation and visualization needs. Learn more about DTES here.

What’s New?

• Expanded Library – More digital twins available than ever, covering a wider range of simulation needs.
• User-Driven Additions – Your feedback helps shape what twins we develop next—let us know what you would like to see!

Sample of New Digital Twins

Our GIS-powered pipeline has made it easier than ever to generate highly accurate real-world environments. Recent site twin additions include:

Clear Creek, Texas Hill Country Region, Texas

The Clear Creek site twin utilizes vegetation assets created by our team who leverage on-site data capture, photogrammetry, and our automated asset pipelines to create an extremely realistic biome that faithfully replicates this location in the Texas Hill Country region.

This site twin is also provenance-free—but what does that mean?

• Digital twins often come with restrictions – The data sources used to train AI models can impact the ability to commercialize, monetize, or even deploy that model—and many environments available on the internet come with terms, conditions, and usage limitations
• Provenance-free offers freedom of utilization – Because every part of this site twin was created entirely in-house by Duality, it is 100% free of provenance concerns. This means no restrictions on how it is used or the purpose the synthetic data serves.

As with all digital twins in our public catalog, this site twin is available to all users today!

Gascola, Pennsylvania

This site twin is based on geospatial data from Gascola, Pennsylvania, a location of special significance to our robotics users. Its varied terrain and unique geographical features have long made it a popular research and testing ground for the Pittsburgh robotics community. Furthermore, this is one of the first site twins built to work with our new IR sensor. The Gascola environment is available in our catalog starting today.

We’re thrilled to bring this high-fidelity digital twin to life and can’t wait to see how it’s leveraged by all cutting-edge teams in their research and innovation.

LAV-25 System Twin

In addition to new environments, we are continually expanding our collection of system twins, which can be used with any environment to simulate a wide range of operational scenarios. One exciting new addition is the Light Armored Vehicle 25 (LAV-25)—an eight-wheeled, amphibious reconnaissance vehicle designed for multi-terrain and off-road operations. See it here.

Off-road and multi-terrain simulations are a major use case for Falcon users, and as we expand our digital twin catalog, we’re providing a greater variety of vehicles that can be leveraged in all rugged terrains.

Upcoming Classes and Training Sessions

Our new live classes are designed to teach Falcon workflows and simulation best practices to all Falcon users. We provide all attendees with a virtual machine, so all you need to run Falcon for the class is a laptop with an internet connection! The classes are free, and our team is always thrilled to answer any questions that users may have.

Coming up:

Intro to Lighting for Successful AI Training with Digital Twin Simulation

Monday, February 24th

What You’ll Learn:

• Best practices for simulating real-world lighting conditions in FalconEditor
• How different lighting types, as well as shadows, impact AI training
• Techniques for generating diverse, high-volume synthetic datasets to capture corner cases
• Answers to any questions about lighting parameters and workflow challenges in your scenarios

Sign up here!

Intro to Falcon: Walkthrough for Digital Twin Simulation Workflows with FalconEditor

Wednesday, March 5th

What You’ll Learn:

• Create sim scenarios using various digital twin types
• Implement key steps of digital twin simulations workflows
• Work with FalconCloud and leverage free Duality resources from the digital twin catalog
• Configure and navigate Duality's FalconEditor simulation software
• Place and configure virtual sensors
• Run sims and generate data

Sign up here!

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