A distributed virtual driving simulator

FOR POSTER PRESENTATION A Distributed Virtual Driving Simulator Ronald R. Mourant, Naizhong Qiu and Susan A. Chiu Virtual Environments Laboratory 3 34 Snell Engineering Center Northeastern University Boston, MA 02115 email: [email protected] Our goal is to develop techniques for distributed driving simulation on low cost computers. Successful distributed environments have already been implemented for military and commerical applications (Macedonia et al, 1994, Stytz, 1996). These virtual environments are scalable and often use dead-reckoning algorithms to improve network performance. However, a driving simulator with multiple human controlled actors may require near or absolute synchronization. For example, when the lead driver in a car-following situation suddenly brakes, the following car driver needs to respond as quickly as possible to avoid a collison. Such driving paradigms suggest that broadcasting and dead-reckoning may be applicable only if the human controlled actors are further apart than some delta time value. Our multi-driver virtual driving simulator is an extension of the virtual environments drivingsimulator developedby Levine and Mourant (1995). The present study will compare two configurations.The first will be a typical distributed virtual environment in that it will use standard networking. Thesecondconfiguration will utilize cloned data acquisition. This is where the analog signals of each humancontrolled vehicle (gas pedal, brake pedal, and steering) are send to every node. Since we currently haveonly two nodes that are located in close physical proximity, cloned data acquisition can be easilyaccomplished.Duplicate databasesfor the 3D environment and vehicles reside on each computer. We have alreadyimplemented a networked baseddistributed virtual driving simulator using the NT operating system andtwo Pentium computers. Driving scenairos have been developed and will be tested using humancontrolled actors to validate the simulator. We will record the following car driver’s responsesto changesin the lead car’s profile and compare this data for the two configurations specified above with standarddata that was collected in the real world. The results of thesecomparisionswill be presentedin the posterpresentation. ReferencesLevine, 0. and Mourant, R.R. A Driving Simulator Basedon Virtual Environments Technology.Paperpresentedat the 74th Annual Meeting of the TransportationResearchBoard, January, 1995.Macedonia,M.R., Zyda, M. J., Pratt, D.R., Barham, P.T., and Zeswitz, S. NPSNET: A Network SoftwareArchitecture for Large-ScaleVirtual Environments.PRESENCE, Vol. 3, No. 4, Fall 1994, pp.265-287. Stytz, M.R. Distributed Virtual Environments.IEEE Computer Graphicsand Applications, Vol. 16, No.3, May, 1996,pp. 19-31. 208O-8186-7843-7/97$10.00