Simulator X: A scalable and concurrent architecture for intelligent realtime interactive systems

Abstract

This article presents a platform for software technology research in the area of intelligent Realtime Interactive Systems. Simulator X is targeted at Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, and computer games. It provides a foundation and testbed for a variety of different application models. The current research architecture is based on the actor model to support fine grained concurrency and parallelism. Its design follows the minimize coupling and maximize cohesion software engineering principle. A distributed world state and execution scheme is combined with an object-centered world view based on an entity model. Entities conceptually aggregate properties internally represented by state variables. An asynchronous event mechanism allows intra- and interprocess communication between the simulation actors. An extensible world interface uses an ontology-based semantic annotation layer to provide a coherent world view of the resulting distributed world state and execution scheme to application developers. The world interface greatly simplifies configurability and the semantic layer provides a solid foundation for the integration of different Artificial Intelligence components. The current architecture is implemented in Scala using the Java virtual machine. This choice additionally fosters low-level scalability, portability, and reusability. © 2011 IEEE.