[Opensim-dev] Can OpenSim be used for physically realistic training simulator?

[Rhian]

Hi All,

> Great post! I have been trying to explain this distinction between
> simulation and visualization to a lot of people, and the role of virtual
> worlds in this, and I must say that your post nails it. I completely agree
> with you.

Me too!

> Let me share my experience wrt setting up/controlling/managing simulations.
> There are two things: (1) the front-end (user) interface; and (2) the
> backend (simulation) interface; the virtual world sits in the middle. For
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> with charts, etc. Being able to do Javascript or similar would also help a
> lot -- basically a computation that opemsim would send to these 2d
> visualization clients is what I'm looking for.

I think it would be great if eventually OpenSim will be a
"standardized" middle layer which allows plug-ins or APIs to connect
to either Simulation backends or Entertainment backends.
I had a quick look at the images and wonder what the backend does to
the OpenSim-world, do you happen to have some more information on the
web or in-world?

> I haven't played around with the backend interface yet, I've only done very
> simple simulations directly in opensim, using the opensim API. But my plan
> is, again, to use HTTP and/or XMLRPC and/or REST. In other words, I'm seeing
> this as a 3-layer architecture: web browser -- opensim -- simulation engine;
> or 2D View -- Glorified-3D-Controller-Visualizer -- Model. Doing the backend
> interface over HTTP has its drawbacks, namely on the speed, which will limit
> the kinds of things that can be visualized inworld. Nevertheless, that is my
> current plan. I would like to hear of other interfaces.

I'm sure that eventually we can have a better speed between OpenSim
and whatever backend you're using. AFAIK some simulations do require
big computing clusters (or HPC/SuperComputers), so connectivity to
these environments will be desirable, I think.

> For doing these systems, there are two interesting things in here: one is
> deciding which data to visualize in immersive 3D and which data to visualize
> in plain old 2D; the other one is deciding which features of the backend
> simulation are exposed inworld and which features are not exposed. There's a
> thin line in all of this, there is no recipe; it really depends on the
> particular simulation and the points you want to make visible, and how. The
> immersive 3D visualization is psychologically more powerful, but not
> everything should be exposed there, not just because of the enormous amount
> of simulation data and processing, but also because most of the internals of
> simulations are very uninteresting; visualizations of those internals may
> even be misleading/disturbing when we're dealing with probabilistic models
> and the visualization is seen by ordinary people.

You bring up some great points here!
I think that at this point in time OpenSim is indeed a useful tool as
a 3D-Visualization, capable to be used all over the world. I don't
think that trying to bring the computing power -that is sometimes used
in simulations- into OpenSim and doing the real simulation work
in-world is the solution.
I agree that a lot of data and processing should be left out of the
world, it might be too distracting from what you're really trying to
visualize.

> My main point is: interesting times ahead! :-)

I could not agree more!

Rhian