This is part 4 in my series of blog posts on RTI RID configuration tips. Each of these tips, unless otherwise noted, works in HLA 1.3, HLA 1516-2000, or HLA Evolved. Check out the previous posts in this series, and stay tuned for more to come.

Part 1 – RID Consistency Checking 

This is part 3 in my series of blog posts on RTI RID configuration tips. Each of these tips, unless otherwise noted, works in HLA 1.3, HLA 1516-2000, or HLA Evolved. Check out the previous posts in this series, and stay tuned for more to come.

Part 1 – RTI RID Configuration Tips: Consistency Checking

Part 2 – RTI RID Configuration Tips: the Advantages of MTL

Lookup environment variables within your RID

If you’ve followed me through parts 1 and 2 in this series, you may have noticed a theme: managing multiple RID files is a pain. Whether it’s ensuring consistency between the various RID files involved in a single federation, or maintaining separate configurations to be used in different federations, whenever you’re managing multiple RID files you’re bound to run into the occasional hiccup. The goal of these posts is to help you reduce these hiccups and help you identify them when they occur.

This is part 2 in my series of blog posts on RTI RID configuration tips. Each of these tips, unless otherwise noted, works in HLA 1.3, HLA 1516-2000, or HLA Evolved. Take a look at part 1 here, and stay tuned for future posts in this series.

RID files are written in Lisp

The RID file is written in MTL. MTL stands for MÄK Technologies Lisp. MTL is basically a limited form of the Lisp programming language. The primary purpose of the RID MTL file is to set specific variables which are parsed by the RTI’s MTL parser and loaded into configuration settings. The same goal could be achieved using other formats such as XML (another popular MÄK configuration file format), but there are advantages to MTL.