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...)

Periodically, MÄK reassesses platform support for our product line. We consider a platform a paired version of compiler and OS. For example, Windows 7 and MSVC++ 8 is a single platform, while Windows 7 and MSVC++9 is a different platform.  In order to support the most popular and stable platforms while maintaining commitment to quality products, we need to limit the total number of platforms we support as part of the standard product offering.

In general, when deciding to support or not support a platform we consider a number of factors:

We are working on our demos for I/ITSEC and the Traffic Generation feature in B-HAVE 2.0 for VR-Forces 4.0.1 is proving to be a big help. Jim Kogler has blogged about this feature in his Pattern of Life blog, but to recap, when you add spawn points and sink points to a scenario, VR-Forces automatically creates entities (civilian lifeforms or civilian vehicles) at a set interval at the spawn point. They then move towards a randomly chosen sink point. When they get to the sink point they are deleted. This provides a steady stream of entity traffic that moves purposefully without the need to create plans, assign tasks, create routes, and so on. So I thought I would share some of my experiences with them.

My scenario has 18 spawn points and 18 sink points in a relatively small area. After one minute of simulation, more than 200 entities get created. After four minutes more than 400 are created. So when you plan your scenario, consider how many entities you want (including any entities that have specific plans as the main point of the scenario) and plan the number of spawn points accordingly – otherwise, like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, you may find yourself dealing with a flood of entities.

Over the past few months, I've been your main support line for licensing issues outside of key regeneration. During this time, I started to notice a trend – there's a lot of confusion over license configuration. After some research, I narrowed down the cause to be the documentation and the FlexLM tools that we include. We are well aware that the current tools aren't the most adequate or intuitive.

As many of you know, MÄK has an unorthodox model for technical support. We are proud of how we do support, and believe it’s a key reason why people buy our products (other than the fact that we make awesome products!). In the next few weeks, and continuing over the summer, we will be making a few minor changes to how we handle technical support.

Every year we receive a number of support questions which have to do with licensing. We hate to receive them, because licensing should be easy! For the most part it is, as many customers never run into any problems at all. However, when a problem does crop up customers frequently feel at a loss.