Modeling and Simulation: Linking Entertainment and Defense is the published findings of the "Committee on Modeling and Simulation: Opportunities for Collaboration Between the Defense and Entertainment Research Communities", which was convened by the National Research Council at the request of the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office.
The stated objectives of the committee were to:
The group identified five areas of mutual interest to the defense and entertainment communities that warranted research to extend the current state of the art. Each category holds very exciting possibilities for the future of simulation.
Immersive Environments. Examples are provided in which special forces and naval personnel use immersive environments to prepare for future missions. Military flight and tank simulators are also well known for their for their ability to provide an immersive environment through the use of hardware mock-ups and graphic displays. Commercial examples include the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios and an experimental Aladdin ride that was tested at Disney's Epcot Center. The group is eager to extend immersion with improved image generation, body position tracking, devices for navigating the virtual world, and the addition of 3D sound, smell, tactile stimuli, and the complementary combination of all these into a believable whole. Danny Hillis of Walt Disney Imagineering paints a clear picture:
"If you want to make somebody frightened, it is not sufficient to show them a frightening picture. You have to spend a lot of time setting them up with the right music, with cues, with camera angles, things like that, so that you are emotionally preparing them, cueing them, getting them ready to be frightened so that when you put the frightening picture up, they are startled."
Networked Simulation. The desire to place multiple people at dispersed locations into the same simulated experience is growing in both communities. DOD is eager to train soldiers with networked simulations, rather than transporting people and equipment around the world to achieve physical co-location when virtual co-location is sufficient. The computer gaming industry is including network playability in most of their new games. Though this was once a differentiator, it is now a requirement to keep up with the competition. The committee identified three research foci in this area. Higher bandwidth is necessary for the growing realism demanded by the applications and the increasing number of participants. Multicast and area-of-interest managers can reduce the proliferation of network packets and make the best use of the bandwidth that is available. Finally, techniques are needed to reduce latency in message delivery across the network.
Interoperability Standards. DOD is especially focused allowing diverse simulations to interoperate with each other through the definition of interoperability standards independent of specific software or training devices. This is being approached through the definition of both transfer protocols and simulation architectures. The entertainment community's only expressed interest in this area was the definition and efficient implementation of the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). Beyond that, they have shown a definite aversion to interoperability. Warren Katz of Mak Technologies reports that game developers view their proprietary methods as a strategic edge over their competitors and are not interested in sharing these or adopting standardized methods.
Computer Generated Characters. Computer and video games are saturated with synthetic characters whose goal is to conquer or eliminate the human player of the game. Quake, Command and Conquer, Chessmaster, AH-64 Commanche, and Carmegeddon all contain computer generated characters that exhibit some basic level of artificial intelligence. However complex these behaviors are, they do not adapt or improve as a result of experience. Seasoned gamers learn these behaviors and soon find them easy to defeat. The DOD simulation community faces the same challenge. Training simulations require the participation of hundreds of human operators to adequately stimulate the intended training audience. Systems like ModSAF, Eagle, and Command Forces provide a low level of reasoning, but much more complex behaviors will be required for future training systems.
Tools for Creating Simulations. The committee identified the need for tools to easily generate databases for simulations and to compose very complex visual and experiential environments. Most simulations are driven by databases that can be modified to change the play of the system. In the gaming world, this is illustrated by the niche industry that creates new levels for Doom, Quake, Hexen, Duke Nukem 3D, and others. Those who have not actually developed these levels often under estimate the difficulty of doing so with the available tools. Both military and gaming customers have discovered that a conceptually straightforward task requires the mastery of many idiosyncratic tools and the dedication of hours or weeks of development time. For composition, artists require tools to allow them to easily insert features into the synthetic world. These may include new roads, rivers, mailboxes, or lettering on signs and other objects. The report shows members of the entertainment committee more vocal in their need for these tools than for any of the previous four technologies.
Conclusion. The report is a very interesting overview of some of the hard problems that need to be solved for tomorrow's simulations. Participants emphasize the need for educated practitioners in the field, pointing out that very few university programs develop and prepare these types of people for industry. The report also contains the constant cry by academics for more government and corporate funding of basic research projects at universities.
There is a noticeable difference in the goals of the two communities. DOD is eager to develop finished systems that will remain in the field for long periods of time. The entertainment industry, on the other hand, is interested in a one-time effect as seen in a movie, or in a game that will explode onto the market and be pushed aside by the next hot product within a year. Both groups acknowledge that identifying a forum for cooperation will be difficult. Detractors point out that the technology areas in the report are largely defined by DOD and commonalties with entertainment are only vaguely established. John Latta of 4th Wave, states in his position paper, "There is no congruence in commercial business models and military mission statements. ... DOD can help the entertainment industry by having more movie theaters on military bases."
Modeling and Simulation: Linking Entertainment and
Defense
ISBN: 0-309-05842-2
National Academy Press
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