Representation of Dynamic Synthetic Environments in Distributed Simulation

Current practices, standards and technologies are aimed at achieving correlated static synthetic representations of Defence operational environments across distributed simulation systems. However, real world operational environments are dynamic in nature. Weather varies with time and place, and the terrain is affected by both natural effects (e.g. heavy rainfall, snow, flooding) as well as the effects of force behaviour, such as munitions damage to buildings and infrastructure. Where multiple simulation systems are federated, both the static and dynamic representation of the operational environment needs to be consistent. This paper describes work being carried out by the MSG-156 Task Group (TG) to investigate simulation architectures, processes and standards aimed at achieving improved and consistent representations of dynamic environments across simulation systems. This includes the representation of weather data in simulation, processes to dynamically modify the terrain and protocols for simulation systems to retrieve the current state of the simulated operational environment. Modelling and Simulation as a Service (MSaaS) is assessed as being a key enabler required to achieve this. This paper describes a set of Use Cases and the Conceptual Models that has been derived from these Use Cases. A proposed architecture for achieving a consistent dynamic synthetic environment is also included, together with a description of planned experiments to evaluate the proposed solution.