Subject: Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) standard

From: [email-masked] (Eyal Lebedinsky)
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 09:34:48 +1000 (EST)

I will send it this time to rend386-discuss instead of -request :-)

Hello Everyone,

This posting is intended to raise some discussion on a new (to some) matter.

I have been on the list for a while now, followed the activity but did not
get involved actively. However, I have a flight simulator which I may try
at some point to integrate with rend386 (it now does it's own wire-frame
graphics). I am waiting for support for high resolutions (320x200 is just
not on, even 640x480 it too low for me).

However, as we are talking VR which often implies an interactive application
with multiple participants, I though it may be appropriate to mention the
emerging DIS standard that defines protocols for Distributed Interactive
Simulation applications. This is the kind of protocols used for a while
by the military in their Simnet, which had multiple simulators connected
in real time.

There is no current (to my knowledge) free implementation of the DIS standard
protocol, however the core is not that complex. I plan to implement it for
my simulator and I am trying to see if there is other interest in a free
and general implementation of DIS for use by other applications.

The benefit of DIS is that different, unrelated applications, can talk to
each other (exchanging location of objects and related info) without the
need to prior design. So a bike simulator and a house fly-through program
can become aware of each other, and you will then see the bike through a
window when it passes by and vv.

I see this as a nice feature for the rend386 project where people can put
together separate application which later can be plugged together into one
scenario and interact (or at least co-exist).

-- 
Regards
	Eyal Lebedinsky		[email-masked]

---

From: Chris Kwasnicki <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 09:02:23 -0400 (EDT)

> [deleted cute stuff :) ]

You'll notice most commercial flight simulators have a resolution of only 
320x240 or 200.  This is done to get acceptable frame rates.  640x480
without hardware assistance or a multi-cpu setup will be slow.
 
> [description of DIS standard]
> 

I believe that a company in MA has done something along these lines that
is relatively inexpensive.  You may want to contact [email-masked], he
can point you in the right direction.  That aside, I'm interested.
 
> [description of a typical scenario].
> 
I would be interested in this.  However, it should not be tied to REND386,
but should be a portable extension, since REND386 is official un-supported.
Something usable with VR-386 , Avril, and others would be of more interest.
Later,
   Chris

 _____________________________________________________________________________
/Chris Kwasnicki, Lead Developer, VRacker Inc.  [email-masked]  (212)236-1455 \
| VRASP (Virtual Reality Association of Students and Professionals) member    |
| Author of the "Making REND Work" column in PCVR (VR for the PC) Magazine.   |
| Creator of award-winning virtual worlds, ask me about VRASP, PCVR, VRacker  |
| Inc., the VRASP project "uniVRsum", or about designing a world for you      | 
\_____________________________________________________________________________/