In POL Part 1, I explained how you can specify the frequency and timing of entity spawning in a POL template. In this blog, I’ll explain what happens after entities get spawned.
The default behavior for a spawned entity is to randomly pick a sink point of the same type, walk or drive to the sink point, and be removed from the scenario. The default plan provides purposeful behavior for each entity and may be sufficient for your simulation.
You’ve been hearing a lot lately about the Pattern of Life support in B-HAVE 2.0.4 for VR-Forces 4.0.4. We’ve told you that you can automatically create realistic background traffic in your scenarios without laborious planning and route development. But what does it really mean? In this blog and its successor, I’ll drill down a bit into how POL works.
First of all, it isn’t really the Pattern of Life, it’s the Patterns of Life. When you use the POL feature, entities get created automatically at locations of your choice called spawn points (and we say that newly created entities are being spawned). The frequency and timing of their creation is controlled by templates. We provide templates for civilians and civilian vehicles. However, you can create as many templates as you want for creating any supported entity. You can also create multiple templates for any particular entity type that vary in the pattern of creation that they use. So, you really have multiple patterns at your fingertips. (continued...)
I'm heading out today to the Fall SIW Conference in Orlando - the semi-annual Simulation Interoperability Workshop hosted by SISO (www.sisostds.org). As usual, MAK is participating in many ways:
Help spread the word about modeling and simulation!
Can’t seem to figure out why the play/pause/rewind buttons in VR-Forces are disabled? Wondering why you can’t create/load new scenarios in VR-Forces? I originally posted this question/answer in our forum – since it’s a common problem, we wanted to point it out here as well.
Usually this means the front-end and the back-end are not talking to each other. This could be the result of a number of things, ranging from your own network to a firewall problem.
If you've eliminated all possibilities of your computer interfering with itself, it is likely that you have two network cards on your computer. When this is the case, you need to specify a device address in the VR-Forces launcher dialog box. It conveniently has a drop down box of IP addresses you can select from. Usually the first non-127.0.0.1 address is sufficient. Select this and launch VR-Forces from here. If the buttons are still disabled, we encourage you to let us know, either here or on the original forum post.
Each HLA object must have an object name that is unique throughout the federation execution. When an object is registered, the federate can provide a name or let the RTI supply an object name. In the HLA 1.3 specification, when the federate supplies the name, it is up to the federate to make sure that the name is unique. If it isn’t, the RTI throws an exception. The HLA 1516 specification lets you reserve names to ensure that they are unique.
By default, the VR-Link publishers perform name reservation and object reservation at the same time - when the publisher is created. The name reservation process requires a round trip handshake between the local RTI component (LRC) and the rtiexec. Therefore, performing it just before an object is registered can delay the object registration process. If the federate is simulating a limited number of objects that are created at start up, this overhead is negligible. However, if the federate is creating many 100s of objects or if an object is being created in a time critical fashion (say a missile fly out), the delay caused by name reservation can become significant. One way to avoid the name reservation delay is to perform the name reservations ahead of time before the objects are registered. VR-Link can do this. (continued...)
When selling toolkits, we run into the same kind of problems that people selling hammers have. Most people won’t believe that the tool can build a house unless I show them a house built with the tool. With our software toolkits, many customers want to see the possibilities that the API is capable of. Because of this, many of the demos that we create have a touch of customization to them, some more than others. However, we always do it in a way that a customer can replicate when they are working with our APIs and we do it through the magic of plugins. Demos including dynamic terrain and video streaming are all implemented as plugins. (continued...)
VR-Forces 4.0.4 gives you Pattern of Life with B-HAVE, enabling you to quickly and easily add realistic background traffic into your simulation. But that’s not all, folks. We’ve put together a (non-exhaustive) list of more additions and improvements we’ve made to VR-Forces! Contact us if you have questions or concerns.
Radar Modes - Being able to configure named modes for radar systems is an important part of electronic warfare (EW). VR-Forces now allows users to configure multiple named modes for radar systems. A named mode could be “off” or “low power” or “search”. This is all done through configuration files. The F18 has two modes “Track” and “Search”. Users can create new specific modes and then set them through plans. (continued...)
This week, MÄK is in sunny Las Vegas for the AUVSI Unmanned Systems 2012 show. Sitting in the middle of one of the largest unmanned vehicle trade shows is a like sitting on the set of Wall-E, but with more robots. We're showing our simulated video solutions and how we can support experimentation and training for these systems. We teamed up with DiSTI this week to develop a ground control station that interacts with the simulation, controls the UAV, and receives data streams from the simulated UAV over MISB standards compliant protocols just like a real UAV would.
If you're looking for a winning bet, come by the VT MÄK booth (#2911) and see how we can help you produce reliable training and experimentation platforms for your unmanned systems.
We are pleased to announce the introduction of the Early Adopters Program for MÄK COTS software!
These days, MÄK is moving full steam ahead with some exciting features in our product line - be ahead of the curve and learn about these upcoming features before their public release. As a member of the Early Adopters Program, you’ll receive download links to pre-released software; this gives you the chance to provide critical comments about feature usability and direction that can influence a product’s final release. These releases will also help you better understand the direction our products are going with regard to new features.