Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) is an open standard for conducting real-time platform-level
wargaming across multiple host computers and is used worldwide especially by military organizations but also by other agencies such as those involved in space exploration and medicine.History The standard was developed over a series of "DIS Workshops" at the Interactive Networked Simulation for Training symposium, held by the
University of Central Florida's Institute for Simulation and Training (IST). The standard itself is very closely patterned after the original
SIMNET distributed interactive simulation protocol, developed by
Bolt, Beranek and Newman for
Defense Advanced Research Project Agency in the early through late 1980's. BBN introduced the critical concept of
dead reckoning to efficiently transmit the state of battle field entities, as well implementing DARPA's vision of simulations involving inexpensive general purpose computers (vs. 6DOF
motion platforms and/or
supercomputers), hundreds of online players (not just the 'onesies and twosies' which had been done before), wherein the realism and training value came not from high-fidelity simulation of vehicle dynamics but by the real time play with lots of intelligent allies and lots of intelligent opponents.
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