Commercial Game Development Using HLA and SEDRIS

Significant similarities exist between DoD simulation applications and networked simulation games developed for entertainment. To date, however, there has been no compelling reason for commercial game developers to adopt DoD methods and standards. Interestingly, HLA compares favorably to current commercial solutions like Microsoft's DirectPlay. There is clear benefit to DoD if HLA is embraced by the gaming world as the de facto standard for architecting distributed simulations. Widespread commercial development reduces acquisition costs for HLA compliant simulations and provides for a richer set of tools, technologies, and developers. The objective of this research effort is to assess HLA as a commercially viable alternative for implementing networked games, and finding solutions to the distributed database design problem. This shall be one by developing a civil aviation flight simulation game. A primary objective shall be evaluation of the SEDRIS data model within this commercial software. Phase I shall define requirements for such a product, map these requirements into suitable Federation and Simulation Object Models, and assess performance using the RTI for WindowsNT. Leveraging simulation capabilities and expertise already present at Cybernet, this effort shall include a demonstration of the resulting federation prototype.