UTSAF: A multi-agent-based framework for supporting military-based distributed interactive simulations in 3D virtual environments

A Military-based distributed interactive simulation (DIS) such as ModSAF has been used for many years. Several problems of the DIS-based simulation to support a large and heterogeneous virtual simulation environments have been discovered (Stone, Zyda, Brutzman, and Falby 1996). To solve these problems, we propose an architectural multi-agent-based framework to support a large military-based simulation with 3D visualization using inexpensive game simulators. Several software agents are used to support interoperability between DIS-based military simulation nodes and Unreal Tournament game simulators. An agent is used to reduce DIS traffic to efficiently utilize network bandwidth. It also performs protocol conversion between DIS protocol and a game engine protocol. Additionally, using a multi-agent system, our work is easily expandable to support several network environments and also to support agent-based intelligent operations. Our main contribution is twofold. We use a multi-agent system which is scalable to support our framework. In addition, our framework builds a simulation bridge that enables affordable high-quality 3D viewer node using affordable game simulations for military simulations.