Virtual impact is ready to strike!

As my friends already said that we tried write our software specification requirements, did some research about HLA-RTI implementation, decompose our system into modules, did some brainstorming roles of those modules within the whole system and started out to build our website in this week.

Some of the subjects are already explained by Senan and Ilke, nevertheless I want to make some additions about our efforts.

First of all, we thought that if we want to start immediately produce concrete application, we have to search and decide which HLA-RTI implementation to use. After making some investigation, we found tens of implementations but most of them do not suit us. Some of them are commercial, some of them are not completed and even have not a proper documentation or are not totally compatible with standards. The best choice which is the Portico Project glared at us. Because, it has a comprehensive documentation including beginning to Portico part. Actually, to start with this component is the most important for us. Also, it has Java and C++ support which is again most suitable for us. Here is a link of documentation part of it about Java: http://porticoproject.org/index.php?title=Getting_Started_With_Portico_Java. Furthermore, Portico project is compatible with 1.3, IEEE 1516 standards totally. It would be better for us to use such self completed open source implementations, otherwise we may have to make contribution to RTI implementation itself rather than dealing with our own project.

Last topic, I want to say something about is decomposing of our system into modules and roles of the modules. We decided to divide our system into 5 main parts: Federation, database management system, database itself, 3D model and graphic engine. I want to talk about them separately from a higher perspective.

Federation is composed of federates which are parts of simulation system such as soldier, helicopters etc. Those federates within federation communicate each other via RTI. Though, here are also some subcomponents of RTI for example RTI ambassador which serves services for communication, details will be included in our formal reports e.g software specification requirements.

Database management system will be the component that will be in relation with federates and 3D models to acquire related information from database thanks to methods that is harbored in it.

Database is the noncommercial off-the-shelf product. We may use a restricted version of Oracle or maybe MYSQL database. We have not decided on it yet.

3D models as understood will contain information about entities of simulation. But, the information does not have to be visual only. For example, it can be missile capacity of a plane.

Graphic engine will be the part that will visualize the simulation. Details of graphic engine has not been determined yet. We are still making some search about it discussing specifications about it.

That's all for me for this week. Have a nice day :)
Suat Gonul