Core Support Area: Forces Modeling and Simulation (FMS)

Lead: David Bernholdt

EMail Address: bernhold@npac.syr.edu

Telephone:  315 443 3857             Fax: 315 443 1973

Core Technology Tracking and Transfer

In Year 3, we made significant progress 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 continue 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. In Year 4, we propose to continue the technology
tracking activities and Web page development to support further
evolution of WebHLA. We also propose to develop a set of tutorials and
training materials on porting existing simulations to HLA-compliant
HPC modules with Web/Commodity interfaces using WebHLA platform.

Training

Our training materials will be based on lessons learned in
our Parallel CMS work and will cover the following components:

o ModSAF for vehicle and terrain modeling (by STRICOM) 
o Mak Stealth for battlefield visualization (by Mak Technologies) 
o Comprehensive Mine Simulator (by Ft. Belvoir, Night Vision and
  Electronic Sensors  Directorate) 
o DirectX/Direct3D  based NT battlefield viewer 
o JWORB (Java Web Object Request Broker)
o Object Web RTI, i.e. Java/CORBA based implementation of DMSO RTI 1.3
  as a JWORB service 
o C++ interface library that allows to wrap any C++ simulation code as
  HLA CORBA object, linkable to OW-RTI
o WebFlow for visual authoring Web based distributed dataflow 
applications 
o OMBuilder FEDEP tools for visual authoring HLA compliant FOMs
  (Federation Object Models) and SOMs (Simulation Object Models).

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 that WebHLA training will be useful for several high 
performance simulation groups and projects within the DoD HPC 
Modernization Program. The best implementation and the specific content 
of the training will be determined in the process of interacting with 
CEWES users during our planned trips aimed at installing WebHLA 
infrastructure to support sustained Metacomputing CMS capability (see 
focused project proposals). Possible techniques can range from local or 
remote lectures for novice users to WebHLA based hands-on interactive 
multiplayer training for more advanced users.

Apart from WebHLA related training, we will provide continuous
maintenance and updating of the PET web pages for FMS, including both
the executive summary pages at CEWES and the associated technical
elaboration pages at Syracuse (http://bombay.npac.syr.edu/FMS). We
will also pursue our previous technology tracking activities which led
us to our FMS/Web/HLA/HPC convergence vision, now being realized by
the WebHLA framework. New technologies to be exlored in Year 4
include: DirectX/Java3D/VRML/DHMTL in the front-end, XML in the
middleware, and FMS core modules (such as SPEEDES, Parallel IMPORT,
E-MoDSAF) in the backend.

User Outreach:

Our current user community include: a) CMS team at Ft. Belvoir and 
their users where we provide parallel CMS support; b) FMS CHSSI team 
where we provide Web based Computing and WebHLA. We will continue 
support for these groups and explore opportunities to enlarge our 
outreach program in two areas: c) large joint M&S projects such as 
JSIMS which require help from FMS; d) new HPCMO users, with expertise 
either in FMS or related computational areas, who are interested to 
explore WebHLA based meta-federation technologies.

Targeted Codes/Algorithms:
	DMS HLA software components (RTI, FEDEP tools)
	WebHLA software components (listed above in training)
	CMS
	ModSAF

Required Resources:

Deliverables:

o A set of training materials, accessible in various formats, including:
  - Web pages (Jun'99)
  - Presentations (Sep'99) 
  - documentation (Dec'99)
  - real-time interactive, WebHLA based distance training (Mar'00)

o Trip reports, bi-weekly PET reports, PET review presentations (as required)

o Scientific papers and presentations derived from CEWES MSRC PET
  supported activities (as available)

o Development and support of the CEWES FMS webspace and the
  extensive FMS webspace hosted at NPAC (ongoing)

o Technology tracking report (Mar'00 and other times as appropriate)