White Papers

Although there are many criteria for evaluating and comparing RTI implementations, one of the most important is performance. Choosing an RTI that maximizes throughput and minimizes latency, bandwidth, and CPU usage can mean the difference between success and failure for an HLA simulation program.

In this paper we will present some of the design decisions we have made to provide an extremely fast RTI for nearly all HLA exercises. Before we get to how the design of the MAK RTI has led to its unsurpassed performance, we'll present some real numbers on common situations for each of three major performance criteria.

You can write Lua scripts that define tasks and set data requests (sets) for simulation objects in VRForces.
Using Lua scripting, anyone with sufficient programming skill can add a new task or set. VR-Forces
builds a dialog box automatically. The scripts can be added to the Task and Set menus with all C++
tasks and the end user will not be able to tell the difference between a C++ and a Lua task.

The MAK RTI supports IPv4 and IPv6. Read this white paper to learn about the differences between these versions of the Internet Protocol and how to configure the MAK RTI to use IPv6.

Defense budgets are tight, live training opportunities are limited, and large exercises cannot be run on a regular basis due to cost and complexity. How can military forces be optimally trained to maintain a high level of readiness to support the multiple missions they are expected to perform? This paper explores the role of simulation in wargaming and training to help the command staff develop planning and decision-making skills. We examine the challenges of training modern militaries, the current landscape and requirements of military training, the importance of simulation in training environments, and the capability gaps associated with today’s large-scale simulation exercises. We then present MAK’s Command and Staff Training system (MAK CST) as the solution to meet the challenges and fill the gaps that exist in today’s military training.

While many of us may look out our car window on the way to work at a crowded city street and see randomness, there is really quite a bit of order beneath the surface. It turns out people – by their very nature – are quite predictable.  These patterns occur around us every day. No matter what you are doing, there is some pattern there: it could be cars passing you on the highway, planes flying above you, people walking next to you. Your world is full of patterns.

This paper will discuss current work MAK is doing for the US Army Soldier System Center to generate semantic terrain information for the Infantry WarriorSimulation (IWARS), a constructive simulation being developed for analysis of infantry tactics and equipment. Geoprocessing models are being developed in C/JMTK to generate mobility, cover, and concealment features for use inplanning and movement behaviors.

In this paper, we discuss requirements and approaches for integrating DIS, HLA, and TENA into ArcGIS-based systems, to allow simulated entities to be rapidly displayed and manipulated.

One of the key concerns facing developers of HLA simulation applications, is that they need to be able to reuse federates in different federation executions, each with its own way of representing data in a FOM. This paper presents and contrasts two predominant methods that help to solve this FOM-independence problem.

We will use our perspective as a developer of federates that need to support multiple RTI implementations, as an RTI developer, and as an RTI-bridge developer to describe our experiences and opinions regarding these techniques.

In this paper we develop several techniques providing efficient access to detailed information, and timely triggers to help the user know when, where, and how to access this information.

In addition to addressing the rationale and design, this paper will discuss some of the implementation, operation, and performance issues and point out areas of future work.

This paper examines and analyzes the impact of using a high fidelity communication model versus the limitations of simplified communication models in existing synthetic environments.

This paper discusses some of the issues involved in implementing a DIS-like federation within HLA. The process entails defining a Federation Object Model for the federation, developing software that implements the protocol described by the FOM, and modifying simulator code to use this software in order to interact with the other federates.

This paper describes the distributed region approach and its implementation in the MAK High Performance RTI using multicast groups.

HLA Evolved is the working name for IEEE 1516-2010, the latest update to the HLA Standard. HLA is an official family of IEEE standards given the name IEEE 1516.2000. HLA Evolved was officially published in 2010. This FAQ answers the big questions about the latest networking standard – what is HLA Evolved and how can it help you.

HLA Federation developers often struggle to achieve their performance goals and must tweak theirchosen RTI to meet those needs. This paper tries to answer the question of “What really matters” when trying to optimize the performance ofan HLA federation.

MAK’s Hawaii terrain was built to demonstrate how the many terrain techniques supported by MAK’s VR-Vantage, VR-Forces, and VR-TheWorld Server can be combined to cost-effectively create a correlated, seamless, global 3D environment - with just the right amount of fidelity in each area for the tasks at hand.

This paper details how the Marines, along with parts of the Air Force, are using human simulation with advanced AI to present tactically significant ISR video feeds to trainees. Both systems rely on the ability to represent complex scenarios with large numbers of human characters and to dynamically control the action to ensure the scenarios support specific training objectives.

This paper describes a phased research program to create a set of automated HLA interoperability testing tools designed to simplify and speed up the process.

MAK has long presented the benefits of the terrain agility features of VR-Vantage, its 3D/2D visualization application, and VR-Forces, its computer generated forces application. Terrain agility refers to these applications’ ability to import, simulate upon, and display many types of terrain data, rather than being restricted to a single prescribed format. For MAK it means that we can meet the needs of a wide variety of customers either out-of-the-box or with some assistance. For our customers, it means that we do not require them to convert their terrain data into a specific format to use our applications. They can use the terrain data that they already have. In this paper we describe our strategies for terrain agility. (For simplicity, when we refer to VR-Vantage support for a feature, it implies VR-Forces front-end support as well. The VR-Forces back-end is also terrain-agile and supports most of the strategies described for the front-end as well as some simulation-specific features.)

We present a business model providing an extremely fast method of transferring new research to the command and control community. As any software developer or user knows, there is a vast gulf between research beta prototypes, and commercial quality software. By shortening the time between concept and commercialization, command and control programs increase their technological advantage.