JAVELIN

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JAVELIN
Michael D. Myjak Vice President CTO The Virtual
Workshop, Inc. P.O. Box 98 Titusville, FL
32781 mmyjak_at_virtualworkshop.com
Sean T. Sharp Sr. Software Engineer The Virtual
Workshop, Inc. P.O. Box 98 Titusville, FL
32781 ssharp_at_virtualworkshop.com
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JAVELIN
Java Virtual Environment Layered Infrastructure

• Java Real-Time RTI
• the Virtual Reality Namespace Service

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JAVELIN VRNS - Overview

• In the Beginning
• Darwinian Simulation
• Theres a New Kid in Town
• The Nuts and Bolts of VRNS
• Future Plans

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In the Beginning.

• Jack A. Thorpes paper entitled
• "Future Views Aircrew Training 1980-2000.
• Advances are on the Horizon
• Not just Simple Improvements
• Bold New Concepts
• Became the Catalyst for Large-Scale Networked
  Simulation Systems

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The Cyberspace Battlefield

• The Quest Began in the Late 1980s
• SIMulator NETworking (SIMNET)
• Distributed Interactive Simulation
• Aggregate Level Simulation Protocol
• Highly Latent Architecture
• REALLY Troublesome Interface

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The Cyberspace Battlefield

• The Quest Began in the Late 1980s
• SIMulator NETworking (SIMNET)
• Distributed Interactive Simulation
• Aggregate Level Simulation Protocol
• High Level Architecture
• Run Time Infrastructure

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Simulating Moores Law

• Hardware Performance Doubles
• Semiannually
• Simulation programs continue to evolve in both
  complexity and performance
• And at a rate much faster then the protocols upon
  which they were based.
• This eventually leads to a situation that is
  untenable protocols that are too rigid for the
  task at hand.

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Theres a New Kid in Town!

• A Couple of Concurrent Events
• Object Oriented Programming Constructs (a late
  70s concept)
• A Stable Internet that Worked
• Flexible, Constructive Simulations

• And of course, that Interactive Stuff based on a
  stodgy, rigid, out-dated protocol

(that actually worked)
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Platform Proto Federation

• Early experience foreshadowed many of the events
  yet to come

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Exploring the Weaknesses in HLA

• IF we dont learn from PAST mistakes then were
  bound to repeat them!
• So why does protocol-based Interoperability work
  anyway?
• Occums Razor?

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A New Opportunity

• National Information Infrastructure (NII)
  Initiative
• Sub to the Naval Postgraduate School
• Lead by Jaron Lanier
• Attempted to Integrate Human/VR/Simulation
  through NII
• A New Idea sparked a catalyst...
• A Scaleable VR Namespace Service

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Simple Ideas or Software Alchemy

• Zyda postulated the advantages of a VR Name
  Server to Net-VEs
• Brutzman was seeking a methodology that would
  permit dynamic protocols
• Federated Simulations had the FOM
• Hmmm...
• Put all these concepts in a blender...
• - Could we create large, scaleable Networked
  Virtual Environments ?

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So what if...

• Could we provide a methodology to store raw
  object classes, methods and their attributes
  on-line?
• Yeah, well thats been done.
• So what if we could also store object instances
  and their behaviors on-line?
• Thats been done before too
• Now apply a component-based approach

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Software Gestalt

• Give names to these objects, methods, attributes,
  instances, protocols, etc.
• Store these objects on-line, in a readily
  accessible manner (read automated)
• Develop a baseline methodology for a scaleable
  (i.e., hierarchical) approach
• Layout an XML/DTD description of these objects...

and a new methodology is born!
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Dynamic Semantics...

• Dynamically alter the state information and/or
  behavior of objects executing in an operational
  environment.
• Not only could we store and recall
• object/protocol information
• object instances and alter methods
• We managed to demonstrate that the semantics of
  object protocol behaviors could be altered
  dynamically
• While those objects are running

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JAVELIN - Revolutionary New Technology

• We began by integrating our concepts into Javelin
  
• FOM/RID file was already in XML
• URLs were already being used in Javelin to load
  the FOM/RID information apriori
• Now we had a mechanism to alter the FOM data
  dynamically...

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Flexible FOMs

• The concept of an agile FOM isnt new
• An implementation strategy for dynamic FOMs and
  RTIs certainly is
• A mechanism which could permit the FOM RTI data
  structures to be altered dynamically could
  incorporate
• Dynamic FOMs and Agile Run Time Infrastructures
• Permit New Federates to join an Executing
  Federation
• Late Joiners with New Object Classes
• Efficient Departure of Dead Federates Objects
• And automate the garbage collection of RTI state
  info.
• Ad hoc Federation Deployment

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Just In Time Operations...

• Performance Issues were initially explored
• Used Open LDAP for serving VRNS
• Not the speediest of performers
• 50 msec to update method or class
• Commercial LDAP systems perform better
• Scaleable, but tools to manage the directory
  structure need to be developed

- Dynamic Configuration Manglement
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Just In Time Operations...

• Performance Issues were initially explored
• Used Open LDAP for serving VRNS
• Not the speediest of performers
• 50 msec to update method or class
• Commercial LDAP systems perform better
• Scaleable, but tools to manage the directory
  structure need to be developed

- Dynamic Configuration Management
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Summary

• A Proof of Principle Demonstration Showed that
  Dynamic Semantics Work
• Java work-arounds explored demonstrated
• Used Lightweight Directory Application Protocol
  (subset of X.500)
• Noted that the Directory Structure plays a Direct
  Impact on performance
• Culling data background management are just as
  important as in operational use.

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Plans

• Continue to do research in this area
• Currently making Alterations to Javelin to
  support dynamic FOMs and dynamic internal RTI
  state
• Integrating with ADL LMS concepts
• Seeking funding to support follow-on work to
  extend these concept(s)

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Got Questions?
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JAVELIN
Michael D. Myjak Vice President CTO The Virtual
Workshop, Inc. P.O. Box 98 Titusville, FL
32781 mmyjak_at_virtualworkshop.com
Sean T. Sharp Sr. Software Engineer The Virtual
Workshop, Inc. P.O. Box 98 Titusville, FL
32781 ssharp_at_virtualworkshop.com