Reactive Control of Distributed Interactive Simulations

This paper is intended to familiarize the sensor design engineer with the capabilities of distributed interactive simulation (DIS) to support the design and test of sensor system. We define DIS terms and then discuss what DIS does to support the design and development process. Fist, DIS provides access to reusable simulation and network components that reduce the cost of tests. Second, it makes user personnel available to interact in the simulation without the expense of bringing the participants to the test site. Third, DIS has reusable computer- generated forces that provide the engineer with sufficient threats and friendlies to load the sensor system in an affordable exercise. Examples of how an engineer would design a study to take advantage of DIS capabilities are provided.

This paper discusses the design, development, and use of a performance monitoring tool for Distributed interactive Simulations (DIS). A typical DIS environemnt consists of hundreds of simulations distributed on both local and wide area netowrks. The adoption of the High Level Architecture (HLA) by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) creates even larger and more complex simulations environments and since DIS continues to interoperate withing HLA, the resource demands continue to cause performance bottlenecks that limit its effectiveness. The monitoring tool descibed in this paper can provide meaninful performance information used as a guide in making decisions about the configuration and control of the available hardware and software resources used in DIS. This information can also be used to support DIS modeling requirements and design. Results are presented from tests comparing alternaitve implementations of the performance monitor; the goal is to achieve a balance between the amount and types of performance data collected and the intrusiveness of the instrumentation code. Testing, analysis, and use of the monitoring systems during DIS exercies has demonstrated the utility of a tool that provides high-level performance information to support persons making inferences about dynamic system and simulation behavior.

Evaluating the effectiveness of the Imperial Femoral Intramedullary Nailing Cognitive Task Analysis (IFINCTA) tool in a real-time simulation setting (Distributed Interactive Simulation): a randomized controlled trial

Real-time data collection and analysis processes have been designed and an initial capability is demonstrated for the July, 1994 JTMDSN test data. The JTMDSN is a one-year, distributed interactive simulation (DIS) demonstration sponsored by the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO). The JTMDSN is built on past TACCSF and RESA DIS accomplishments such as their War Breaker support, to make two more major contributions to the DIS community. First Army, Navy, Air Force, and National Systems interfaced via tactical data links using signal Protocol Data Units (PDUs). Second, the data was collected online from PDUs and reduced to records of key events which could be used to display mission performance and network performance measures in real-time. This paper focuses on this data collection and analysis capability. The JTMDSN DIS Gateway, including the data collection process, was designed and developed by Martin Marietta Corporation. Data analysis processes are being developed by BDM Engineering Services Company. >

Achieving the real-time linkage among multiple, geographically-distant, local area networks that support distributed interactive simulation (DIS) requires tremendous bandwidth and communication resources. Today, meeting the bandwidth and communication requirements of DIS is one of the major challenges facing the design and implementation of large scale DIS training exercises. In this article, we discuss the DIS scalability problem, briefly overview the major bandwidth reduction techniques currently being investigated and implemented in contemporary DIS systems, and present a detailed analysis on the performance and reliability of relevance filtering—a promising technique to improve the scalability of distributed simulation. The idea of relevance filtering is to analyze the semantic contents of the state update messages of a simulated entity (vehicle) and transmit only the ones found to be relevant to other entities. We present our entity-based model for relevance filtering and discuss the implementation of filtering-at-transmission and filtering-at-reception. We introduce the concept of filtering reliability and present different methods to eliminate or reduce filtering errors. Methods that can ensure complete filtering reliability while providing significant bandwidth reduction are developed. Performance evaluation results of relevance filtering and of the filtering reliability methods are presented. The insight gained from our work and the challenges still facing the design of large scale DIS training exercises are discussed.

Just imagine, being able to immerse yourself into a virtual world where you could see the results of your actions with respect to other realistic entities (i.e. people, machines, environments) in a particular scenario. Then, imagine the expansion of this virtual world through the interaction of real-time distributed simulations. This interaction of real-time distributed simulations could greatly enhance education and training, operational verification of design, and mission rehearsal functions needed to support the defense and commercial industries. Through the advancements in technologies (i.e. visual systems, host processors, databases, and networks), we can now realize the expectations of this virtual world. This paper addresses the network requirements for a federal government initiative called Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS). Through our discussion of the DIS environment, we will identify the services and performance capabilities required of advanced network architectures, and relate these requirements to the proposed capabilities of the standard-based broadband technologies of asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and synchronous optical network (SONET). We map the DIS network requirements to the capabilities inherent to these broadband technologies, and specify the access of those capabilities from the DIS application through the broadband network and services. >

Describes the design implementation and experimental results for a multi-user 3D World Wide Web (WWW) browsing system called SharedWeb, which is based on the request-response method of a WWW server. The key features of this system include: (i) the WWW server's ability to remember all the browsers connected to it in order to transmit those messages required to maintain consistent states among the browsers, (ii) the dead-reckoning technique of distributed interactive simulation (DIS) used by the browsers in order to reduce the number of messages sent out on the network and to satisfy the timing requirement demanded by virtual environments, and (iii) the protocol data unit (PDU), also used in DIS, adapted by the SharedWeb system in order not only to include more information about the browsers but also to integrate SharedWeb with DIS in the near future.

This paper provides a basis for planning, designing, and testing distributed exercises and experiments. Lessons learned from the Synthetic Theater of War--Europe (STOW-E) exercise conducted in November 1994 are incorporated to provide system engineers/integrators areas of consideration in the design and testing of distributed interactive simulation (DIS) exercises and experiments. Issues involving DIS compliance in accordance with IEEE 1278.1, and interoperability and compatibility testing measures are also discussed. Design and test issues for live, virtual, and constructive simulations are considered. This paper assumes basic knowledge of DIS principles.

A 3D Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) application was developed and demonstrated in a PC environment. The application is capable of running in the stealth mode or as a player which includes battlefield simulations, such as ModSAF. PCs can be clustered together, but not necessarily collocated, to run a simulation or training exercise on their own. A 3D perspective view of the battlefield is displayed that includes terrain, trees, buildings and other objects supported by the DIS application. Screen update rates of 15 to 20 frames per second have been achieved with fully lit and textured scenes thus providing high quality and fast graphics. A complete PC system can be configured for under $2,500. The software runs under Windows95 and WindowsNT. It is written in C++ and uses a commercial API called RenderWare for 3D rendering. The software uses Microsoft Foundation classes and Microsoft DirectPlay for joystick input. The RenderWare libraries enhance the performance through optimization for MMX and the Pentium Pro processor. The RenderWare and the Righteous 3D graphics board from Orchid Technologies with an advertised rendering rate of up to 2 million texture mapped triangles per second. A low-cost PC DIS simulator that can partake in a real-time collaborative simulation with other platforms is thus achieved.

For the purpose of equipment training, realistic training environments need to be built and makes operators having an immersed sense. Aiming at present military requirement for equipment operation training, a universal 3D modeling method for equipment training environment was put forward, which integrated with terrain, feature and special effect. The related key technologies such as terrain modeling flow, terrain model optimization, Large Area Database Management (LADBM) and particle system are also detailed. Finally, a simulation example was presented to prove the feasibility of the modeling method. It can provide beneficial reference for building realistic equipment operation training environment quickly.

The distributed interactive simulation of multidomain is an important research area of the distributed virtual reality. However, frequent interaction, great quantity of messages and the discrepant need of each individual simulation domain resulted in numerous redundant messages. Filtering out the redundant data and relieving the transfer loads become a pressing necessity. We analysis the principle of data filtering of HLA standard and introduce a data filtering algorithm based on publish/subscribe. Utilized the data locality feature of distributed interaction simulation, this algorithm can be used in multi-domain either. The experiment shows that the method we introduced provides reliable data filtering performance with incurred incremental costs on purchasing information endurable by our system. In addition, the data filtering matching efficiency is well.

One of the current research activities in the networking area consists in trying to federate the Internet new services, mechanisms and protocols, particularly the IETF Integrated Service (Int-Serv) Working Group ones, and the ATM ones, in order to allow new multimedia applications to be guaranteed with an end to end Quality of Service (QoS). Study which is presented in this paper has been realized within a national project whose general goal was to specify and then implement the QoS required by a distributed interactive simulation in an heterogeneous WAN environment consisting in an ATM interconnection of three distant local platforms implementing the IntServ propositions. The first part of the results exposed in the paper is related to the QoS a distributed interactive simulation (DIS) application has to require so as to be correctly distributed in the considered network environment. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the end to end communication architecture defined within the project in order to provide a QoS matching DIS applications requirements.

Article Free Access Share on Seamless simulation: mixing live and virtual simulations Author: Charles D. Burdick Loral Advanced Distributed Simulation, Reston, Virginia Loral Advanced Distributed Simulation, Reston, VirginiaView Profile Authors Info & Claims WSC '93: Proceedings of the 25th conference on Winter simulationDecember 1993 Pages 996–1002https://doi.org/10.1145/256563.256910Published:01 December 1993Publication History 1citation188DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations1Total Downloads188Last 12 Months8Last 6 weeks3 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) has initiated the Synthetic Theater of War (STOW) program to expand the current distributed interactive simulation (DIS) capability to handle larger exercises. Characterizations of the unclassified network traffic from the Synthetic Theater of War-Europe (STOW-E) demonstration are assessed in the context of self-similarity. At small time scales, the LAN traffic oscillates between burstiness and smoothness, whereas the WAN traffic exhibits smoothness. However, both the LAN and the WAN traffic exhibit high burstiness on larger time scales. Therefore, the traffic shows characteristics that would be produced by Poisson-type and self-similar processes. Additionally, in comparing the STOW-E traffic with an asymptotically self-similar process, we find that it has an unusually high Hurst parameter (i.e., H/spl sim/1). A simple mathematical model for the traffic is an uncorrelated process whose parameters vary according to another asymptotically self similar process of high burstiness. Since a combination of self-similar processes results in an asymptotically self-similar process, we conjecture that future STOW traffic should behave as asymptotically modulated self-similar processes.

This paper presents a brief overview of the Combat Vehicle Crew Helmet Mounted Display (CVCHMD) enhanced user system which allows M1A2 rank commanders to accesss electronic battlefield information while out of hatch. The system provides the same information as the commanders independent display located in the turret of the M1A2, but provides it on a HMD. This paper describes the development and testing of the prototype CVCHMD symbology and screens. It discusses the design trade-offs of providing a maximum amount of information while keeping the HMD screens clutter free. It describes the systems symbology, screen layout, and functionality. This paper also describes tests conducted with the enhanced user system by integrating it into an M1A2 tank simulator at the Army's Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) facility at Fort Knox, Kentucky. The DIS testing showed that the CVCHMD enhanced user system would greatly cut down on the number of times an M1A2 tank commander would have to jump back into the tank turret, thus increasing the amount of time they could spend out of hatch. The testing also showed that the system can improve the fightability and survivability of the M1A2 tank.