Dynamic Terrain System Process Development

With the recent advancements of CPU, network, and video card throughput and capabilities, hardware is no longer a deterrent for dynamic environments. The Modeling and Simulation industry has been in a holding pattern with regards to dynamic environments for a various reasons. Without having the requirement, vendors were unwilling to make the investment and until developed, it could not be an imposed requirement. The goal of this research initiative is to define and advance this standard so as to produce the interoperability mechanism necessary to advance this training capability. The proposed architecture and communication mechanism is to extend the Virtual Simulation Architecture (VSA) Distributed Interactive Simulation (V-DIS) standard with the addition of a Dynamic Environment PDU. DIS is an Open, IEEE standard developed early in the 1990’s to support platform level real time war gaming across constructive, live, and virtual domains. It is a rather simple message based system that provides a proven, efficient, and widely accepted distributed tactical communication environment. The plan is to extend the standard with the addition of the new PDU type, develop the accompanying publishing software, and produce an operational prototype at the completion of the Phase I.