Interoperability

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Interoperability Games

• Michael Zyda, Director
• GamePipe Laboratory
• Zyda_at_isi.edu
• http//gamepipe.isi.edu

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Overview

• Interoperability Games
• Defense
• Games
• The DIME Space

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Interoperability

• Interoperability
• The ability to connect simulation clients
  together such that those clients can operate on a
  perceived shared virtual environment.
• State change and interaction event messages being
  the communications between the different models
  of the shared virtual environment.

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Dynamic Extensibility

• Dynamic Extensibility
• The ability to extend the virtual world by adding
  in new objects and interactions while the world
  is running.
• Semantic Interoperability
• Means that when we get a message from another
  simulation client that we can use that messages
  state change or interaction event in our model of
  the virtual world.
• So if we build a dynamically extensible,
  semantically interoperable virtual environment,
  then we have a world that can bring in new
  objects into the world without changing the
  source code for our simulation and that we can
  use the new, previously unseen interactions
  encoded with that new object in our networked
  simulation world and it just works.

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Defense Interoperability

• HLA
• In the DoD community, we have the HLA for
  simulation interoperability.
• HLA was designed at the time we were all still
  thinking about the Fulda Gap.
• So its great for modeling and communicating state
  change and interactions between weapons systems
  that we already know about - basically statically
  defined worlds.
• Not the post-9/11 world of IEDs and the MSA of
  the DIME Space.
• HLA is not so great if what we are trying to do
  is introduce new objects that have new event
  interactions.

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MC-02

• MC-02
• 43 different simulations we had to modify the
  source code of each one in order for the
  simulations to interoperate?
• Do we really want to do business that way?

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Games

• Games
• Our focus this week is on games for modeling,
  simulation and analysis.
• People are thinking games as the interfaces in
  games are way more intuitive than the interfaces
  of our traditional MSA systems.
• So our soldiers go into game-based simulations
  and spend way more time immersed on task rather
  than stumbling around trying to learn the
  interface.
• And we have had some tremendous successes in the
  game space, Americas Army being one such example.

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Game Interoperability

• Networked Games
• Lots of networked games and there are many that
  support squad-on-squad interactions, maybe up to
  all of 32 players - Americas Army is like that.
• Proprietary, one-of-a-kind, networking scheme.

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Game Interoperability

• MMOGs
• Massively multi-player online games.
• Games with numbers of players much larger than
  32.
• Proprietary, one-of-a-kind, networking schemes.

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Game Interoperability

• Peer-to-peer
• Peer-to-peer networking is when we have peers
  that are connected directly to each other for
  game play, with that game play discovered through
  some server or name space mediation scheme.

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Game Interoperability

• Authentication servers game lobbies
• Games are packaged better from the networking
  perspective - there are many systems/plug-ins
  that help you choose which game to play, which
  level provide support for you to challenge your
  buddy to a round via chat services.
• Lots of fun with patents on this

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Game Interoperability

• Time-stamped, event ordered packets
  dead-reckoning-based packet architectures
• SIMNET begat DIS begat HLA and the common
  technology down there is dead-reckoning - most
  DoD worlds are dead-reckoned and are based on
  best-effort UDP communications schemes.
• In the game world, first-person shooters are dead
  reckoned, or ought to be
• BUT there is great demand and utilization of
  time-stamped, event ordered packet architectures
  - think sports games and you understand why
• Lots of patent issues here, as well but they all
  get stomped by Lamports 1978 Time, clocks and
  the ordering of events in a distributed system
  paper.

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Game Interoperability

• Game Security
• Bigger problem than in DoD - DoD has done lots of
  things about network security and gets there due
  to process/procedure standardization.
• Game industry reinvents what it does in
  networking with each game and then only gets to
  security when it is in fire fighting mode.
• Facts of note - Sony has 120 networked games and
  four different middleware solutions for
  networking those games and none of the
  implementations are interoperable or even
  readable by different programmers.
• No standards, no interoperability - although the
  question is starting to be asked with perhaps the
  biggest driver being IP ownership - no real
  requirement to have games interoperate but could
  get there if the IP solution was guaranteed
  lawsuit-free.

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Other Game Industry Networking Issues

• Voice streams headsets
• Simultaneous text chat
• Distributed database patents
• Packet algorithm patents
• Not much RD in the game industry and not much in
  the way of patent filings in the networked game
  arena and the industry is starting to find out
  the hard way of the importance of licensable IT
  technology.

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MSA for the DIME Space

• Probably the best motivator for the use of games
  and interoperability, especially dynamically
  extensible, semantically interoperable
  interoperability is the new focus on MSA for the
  DIME Space
• DIME is diplomatic, intelligence, military and
  economic space.
• Anti-terrorism is pushing us towards this and
  consideration of future potential world state.
• Read the NIC 2020 report

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NIC 2020 Report

• Mapping the Global Future
• Hypothesizes four potential futures
• Davos World - expanding integrating global
  economy
• Pax Americana - rising Asia, aging global powers,
  global energy demands, decline of US unipolarity
  
• A New Caliphate - halting progress on
  democratization
• Cycle of Fear - transmuting international
  terrorism WMDs

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NIC 2020 Games

• So imagine an MMOG that lets us explore the NIC
  2020 alternative worlds
• Of course, we need it interoperable.
• We need it in game form that produces results for
  analysis and decision.
• We need to be able to extend and modify that game
  world as we learn more.
• So dynamically extensible, semantically
  interoperable MSA in a new important domain

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The GamePipe Laboratory

• Michael Zyda, Director
• Zyda_at_isi.edu
• http//gamepipe.isi.edu