| Institution Name: |
Syracuse University |
| Project Identifier: |
ARL-CY4-FMS--1 |
| Project Title: |
Core Support: Forces Modeling and Simulation |
| POC: |
Bernholdt, David E |
| Email: |
bernhold@npac.syr.edu |
| Phone: |
315 443 3857 |
| Fax: |
315 443 1973 |
| CTA: |
FMS |
| Project Description: |
We made a major progress in Year 3 with bringing our WebHLA concepts
and early prototypes to first distributed demonstrations of relevance
for the DoD Modeling and Simulation community and the DoD High
Performance Computing community such as our Parallel CMS
(Comprehensive Mine Simulator), successfully demonstrated in the HPCMO
booth at Supercomputing ?98 in Orlando, FL. BoB Wasilausky, the
FMS CTA Lead said after the demo that he was impressed with both the
quality and quantity of our work and he encouraged us to pursue our
roadmap towards WebHLA defined as the integration point of
Web/Commodity, HPC and HLA technologies in support of the FMS users
and applications. Initial success of Parallel CMS illustrates the
advantages of our Web/Commodity based approach - we were able to
develop and integrate this complex HPC FMS application within a small
R&D budget thanks to the optimal use of interoperability standards and
commodity technologies. Parallel CMS is given as a federation of of
several software modules, and several of them as well as our WebHLA
interoperability and integration platform are naturally reusable for
other HPCMO applications. In Year 4, we propose to develop as our core
support effort a set of tutorials and training materials on porting
existing simulations to HLA- compliant HPC modules with Web/Commodity
interfaces using WebHLA platform. Our traning materials will be based
on lessons learned in our Parallel CMS work and will include a
selection from the following components, currently available within
the WebHLA framework:
? ModSAF for vehicle and terrain modeling (by STRICOM)
? Mak Stealth for battlefield visualization (by Mak Technologies)
? Comprehensive Mine Simulator (by Ft. Belvoir, Night Vision and
Electronic Sensors Directorate)
? DirectX/Direct3D based NT battlefield viewer
? JWORB (Java Web Object Request Broker)
? Object Web RTI, i.e. Java/CORBA based implementation of DMSO RTI 1.3
as a JWORB service
? C++ interface library that allows to wrap any C++ simulation code as
HLA CORBA object, linkable to OW-RTI
? WebFlow for visual authoring Web based distributed dataflow
applications
? OMBuilder FEDEP tools for visual authoring HLA compliant FOM
(Federation Object Models) and SOMs (Simulation Object Models).
? JDIS - an HLA/DIS bridge written in Java and used for converting
DIS modules such as CMS or ModSAF to HLA federates
? PDUDB - a logger/playback support for saving sequences of DIS
PDUs or HLA interactions to a file or relational database that can be
replayed later, e g. for some analysis, visualization or other demo
purposes.
As the HLA user community systematically grows in respose to the
DoD-wide mandate for all simulations to comply with HLA by year 2001,
we feel such traning will be useful for several high performance
simulation groups and projects within the DoD HPC Modernization
Program.
|
| Project Objectives: |
Identify new Web/Commodity technologies of relevance for FMS, provide
evaluation, recommendation and training for the FMS users. Develop
training materials to popularize and dissiminate WebHLA technology
modules. |
| Deliverables: |
a) A set of training materials, accessible in various formats,
including Web pages, presentations, documentation, and real-time
interactive, WebHLA based distance training including components
selected from the list in the Project Description;
b) Trip reports, PET reports, PET presentations, FMS Web site
development. |
| Customers/End Users: |
CHSSI teams developing core FMS modules; PET developers working on
WebHLA based integration of CHSSI codes; other HPCMO users interested
in WebHLA tools for metacomputing and simulation interoperability. |
| Benefit to Warfighter: |
Pervasive base of the Web/Commodity software integrated with HLA
interoperability platform will assure higher quality, robustness and
turnaround in building next generation FMS systems for training,
analysis and acquisition. |
| Project Dependencies: |
This project is driven by the relationship between modern M&S needs
and the evolution of web-based technologies. This project provides
informational input to other FMS projects in the PET program as well
as others (i.e. CHSSI). This project builds on but is not directly
dependent on other PET FMS projects. |
| Risk Element: |
Web/Commodity technologies evolve rapidly and hence special skills are
required to not get lost or side-tracked and to succeed in efficient
tracking and timely evaluation of critical technologies. Legal
conflict between Microsoft (who drives and leads now the Web/Commodity
technology evolution) and the U.S. Government might have
unpredicatable implications if Microsoft gets regulated or leaves the
country. WebHLA will be evaluated by DMSO as part of CHSSI FMS-5 but
it is yet to be approved by a broader DoD community. |
Year X Funding:
Year X+1 Funding:
Year X+2 Funding: |
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