Committee on Modeling and Simulation:
Opportunities for Collaboration Between the
Defense and Entertainment Research Communities
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications
National Research Council
NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Washington, D.C. 1997
NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, selfperpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Bruce Alberts is president of the National Academy of Sciences.
The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. William A. Wulf is president of the National Academy of Engineering.
The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Kenneth I. Shine is president of the Institute of Medicine.
The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Bruce Alberts and Dr. William A. Wulf are chairman and vice-chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council.
Support for this project was provided by the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office through Subcontract 4843 from RGB Technology Inc. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors.
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COMMITTEE ON MODELING AND SIMULATION:
OPPORTUNITIES FOR COLLABORATION BETWEEN
THE
DEFENSE AND ENTERTAINMENT RESEARCH COMMUNITIES
MICHAEL ZYDA, Naval Postgraduate School, Chair
DONNA COX, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
WARREN KATZ, MäK Technologies
JOSHUA LARSON-MOGAL, Silicon Graphics Inc.
GILMAN LOUIE, Spectrum HoloByte Inc.
PAUL LYPACZEWSKI, Alias|Wavefront
RANDY PAUSCH, Carnegie Mellon University
ALEXANDER SINGER, Independent Producer/Director
JORDAN WEISMAN, Virtual World Entertainment Inc.
Staff
JERRY R. SHEEHAN, Study Director
LISA L. SHUM, Project Assistant
GLORIA BEMAH, Administrative Assistant (through November 1996)
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS BOARD
DAVID D. CLARK, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Chair
FRANCES E. ALLEN, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
JEFF DOZIER, University of California at Santa Barbara
SUSAN L. GRAHAM, University of California at Berkeley
JAMES GRAY, Microsoft Corporation
BARBARA J. GROSZ, Harvard University
PATRICK HANRAHAN, Stanford University
JUDITH HEMPEL, University of California at San Francisco
DEBORAH A. JOSEPH, University of Wisconsin
BUTLER W. LAMPSON, Microsoft Corporation
EDWARD D. LAZOWSKA, University of Washington
BARBARA H. LISKOV, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
JOHN MAJOR, Qualcomm Inc.
ROBERT L. MARTIN, Lucent Technologies
DAVID G. MESSERSCHMITT, University of California at Berkeley
CHARLES L. SEITZ, Myricom Inc.
DONALD SIMBORG, KnowMed Systems Inc.
LESLIE L. VADASZ, Intel Corporation
MARJORY S. BLUMENTHAL, Director
HERBERT S. LIN, Senior Staff Officer
JERRY R. SHEEHAN, Staff Officer
JULIE CLYMAN LEE, Administrative Assistant
LISA L. SHUM, Project Assistant
SYNOD P. BOYD, Project Assistant
COMMISSION ON PHYSICAL SCIENCES,
MATHEMATICS, AND APPLICATIONS
ROBERT J. HERMANN, United Technologies Corporation,
Co-chair
W. CARL LINEBERGER, University of Colorado, Co-chair
PETER M. BANKS, Environmental Research Institute of Michigan
LAWRENCE D. BROWN, University of Pennsylvania
RONALD G. DOUGLAS, Texas A&M University
JOHN E. ESTES, University of California at Santa Barbara
L. LOUIS HEGEDUS, Elf Atochem North America Inc.
JOHN E. HOPCROFT, Cornell University
RHONDA J. HUGHES, Bryn Mawr College
SHIRLEY A. JACKSON, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
KENNETH H. KELLER, University of Minnesota
KENNETH I. KELLERMANN, National Radio Astronomy Observatory
MARGARET G. KIVELSON, University of California at Los Angeles
DANIEL KLEPPNER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
JOHN KREICK, Sanders, a Lockheed Martin Company
MARSHA I. LESTER, University of Pennsylvania
THOMAS A. PRINCE, California Institute of Technology
NICHOLAS P. SAMIOS, Brookhaven National Laboratory
L.E. SCRIVEN, University of Minnesota
SHMUEL WINOGRAD, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
CHARLES A. ZRAKET, MITRE Corporation (retired)
NORMAN METZGER, Executive Director
Preface
The entertainment industry and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)—though differing widely in their motivations, objectives, and cultures—share a growing interest in modeling and simulation. In entertainment, modeling and simulation technology is a key component of a $30 billion annual market for video games, location-based entertainment, theme parks, and films. In defense, modeling and simulation provides a cost-effective means of conducting joint training; developing new doctrine, tactics, and operational plans; assessing battlefield conditions; and evaluating new and upgraded systems.
Recognizing this synergy, DOD's Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO) asked the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board to convene a multidisciplinary committee to evaluate the extent to which the entertainment industry and DOD might be able to better leverage each other's capabilities in modeling and simulation technology and to identify potential areas for greater collaboration (see Appendix C for committee members' biographies). The committee met in June and August 1996 to plan a two-day workshop that was held in Irvine, California, in October 1996 (see Appendixes A and B for the workshop agenda and list of participants). It met again in November 1996 to discuss the results of the workshop and to plan the structure and format of this summary report.
The workshop brought together more than 50 representatives of the entertainment and defense research communities to discuss technical challenges facing the two industries, identify obstacles to successful sharing of technology and joint research, and suggest mechanisms for facilitating greater collaboration. Participants were drawn from the film, video game, location-based entertainment, and theme park industries; DOD; defense contractors; and universities. They included top executives and government program managers as well as engineers, film directors, researchers from industry and academia, and university faculty. Through a series of presentations on electronic storytelling, strategy and war gaming, experiential computing and virtual reality, networked simulation, and low-cost simulation hardware, the committee attempted to encourage dialogue among these diverse stakeholders and stimulate discussion of research areas of interest to both the entertainment and defense industries. Because the workshop represented one of the first formal attempts to bridge the gap between the entertainment and defense communities, the committee also hoped to encourage personal contacts between members of the two communities as a means of facilitating future collaboration. As such, the 1996 workshop should be seen as part of an ongoing process that may continue beyond this project and this report.
This report represents the committee's attempt to capture key themes of the workshop discussions. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the applications of modeling and simulation technology in the entertainment and defense industries and discusses the historical flows of technology between them. It also reviews the potential benefits to collaboration and outlines the underlying technologies of modeling and simulation in which collaboration may be possible. Chapter 2 identifies common technical needs of DOD and the entertainment industry, identifying and describing areas in which the entertainment and defense communities appear to have similar interests and in which collaboration, at some level, may be possible. Chapter 3 describes other issues that must be addressed in order to facilitate collaboration and sharing of research. These include the needs to develop the necessary human resources, establish mechanisms for information sharing and technology transfer, strengthen the research base, and overcome cultural differences between the two communities. As Chapter 3 notes, collaboration between the entertainment and defense research communities will require far more than a list of common research interests. Structures must be put in place to facilitate collaboration and to allow greater sharing of information between the two communities; differences in culture and business practices must be overcome, though not necessarily altered. Putting these elements in place will facilitate collaboration over time on an ever-changing set of common technologies and research areas.
This report benefited from the contributions of many people throughout the modeling and simulation community. Workshop participants, through their presentations and discussion, provided the committee with much of the material used in this report. The committee is especially grateful to those participants who submitted position papers outlining the research challenges in their particular fields of interest. The committee drew from these papers in preparing this report; the papers are reproduced in Appendix D. External reviewers of an early draft of this report also provided valuable comments.
Staff members of the U.S. Army's Topographic Engineering Center and Joint Precision Strike Demonstration provided the committee with an informative demonstration of state-of-the-art military systems for battlefield visualization and real-time, man-in-the-loop, networked simulation. David Wray, of DMSO, provided hours of videotaped visual simulations for the committee to examine and excerpt. Several volunteers set up and operated a variety of entertainment and military demonstration systems during the 1996 workshop to provide participants with hands-on experience: Charles Benton of Technology Systems Inc., Michael Bilodeau of Spectrum HoloByte Inc., Steven Carter of Thrustmaster Inc., Leon Dennis of the Armstrong Laboratories at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Brian Kalita of BBN Corporation, and Greg Lutz of Motorola's Government Electronics Division. Robin Scheer, of Spectrum HoloByte Inc., worked tirelessly to arrange the entertainment demonstrations and to contact participants for the strategy and war games session of the workshop. Fred Zyda orchestrated audiovisual presentations during the workshop, demonstrated video games for participants when called upon, and selected video clips and edited the videotape for the "Introductory Commonalities" presentation.
Finally, thanks are due the sponsors of this study. Anita Jones, as director of defense research and engineering, conceived of the project and ensured its realization. James Hollenbach, Mark Jefferson, and Judith Dahmann of DMSO, with support from Terry Hines, of the MITRE Corporation, provided necessary guidance and support for the project and facilitated the participation of the defense community in its completion.
Michael Zyda, Chair
Committee on Modeling and Simulation:
Opportunities for Collaboration Between the
Defense and Entertainment Research Communities
Contents
2 SETTING A COMMON RESEARCH AGENDA
3 SETTING THE PROCESS IN MOTION
APPENDIXES
C BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS