Team-oriented, Design-focused Simulation Tools:

Massively Multiplayer Games in the Engineering Workplace !?

orThe Google Earth version of an

Engineering Simulator ?

Roger A. DougalDept of Electrical EngineeringUniversity of South Carolina

Presented at SCS Summer Simulation MulticonferenceJuly 17, 2007

San Diego, CA

The Ten Words• View-centric• Multiplayer• Hardware-interactive• Management-aware• Poly-lingual• Service-oriented• Multi-, multi-, multi-

• Uncertain• Delimitative• Produceable• Mind-amplifying

View-centric

View-centric

You can see the details

You KNOW that you can’t see the details

Our conference hotel

Somewhere in Colorado

View-centric

Multiplayer

Hardware-interactive

Management-aware

Boss

Engineer Marketing Usergroup

Someone else

Poly-lingual

Simulation Services

Multi-player Multi-resolution Multi-rate Multi-lingual

Delimitative

Uncertain

Produce-able

Mind-Amplifying

Summary of the Challenges• What is the correct model resolution on the

periphery of the focus?• How do I smoothly and dynamically switch model

resolution?• At each increasing level of resolution how do I

initialization the larger system model at the current operating point?

• What methods and structures should I use to organize refinement of a system across disciplines – maintaining (or creating new) interconnects at the various resolutions

• How do still-uncertain parts of the system interact with well-defined parts of the system?

Summary of the Challenges• What form of interaction with the simulation is

interpreted by the simulator as a request for more-or-less resolution? (Spatial zooms might not be everything!)

• How do I estimate uncertainty at every point in the system, when the uncertainty may be dynamic, and a cumulative result of many incremental uncertainties?

• What is the graphical means or algorithm by which I represent uncertainty?

• How do I deal with uncertainties in discrete event?• In a many-user system model, how do I keep abreast

of changes that significantly affect my parts of the system, without being overwhelmed by changes that don’t?

Summary of the Challenges• If another user wants to add an interaction point

with my part of the system, how is that negotiated? Through how many levels of detail must it be propagated?

• How do I capture requirements for interface standards within the simulation models?

• At what level are controls broken out from idealized models that wrap up control with the hardware?

• How do I understand the basic outer limits of system performance before I’ve designed the controls?

• Who is going to develop all of the generic “power” interfaces to all of the rest of the physical world? Is it possible to define generic interfaces? Or are they all application specific?

Summary of the Challenges• How does the system simulation wrap up

administrative details like project decomposition and compartmentalization?

• How often should the comprehensive simulation model be run and monitored by all of the involved parties to be sure that the system design has not strayed off-course?

• Can an engineering simulator be a training device for future engineers?

• How do I bracket acceptable performance of the system, so that I know that the as-built system is sufficiently close to the system model that specifies the system?

• Is it possible for a simulation model to specify a system at a high level, without restricting implementation options?

Summary of the Challenges• How do I propagate uncertainty through discrete

events?• Do I have to represent uncertainty in every single

component?• Will it be possible some day to turn over a

simulation model of a ship to a digital factory that will then produce the ship without human intervention?

• How do we most-effectively capture human thoughts in the design and simulation process and use those human thoughts to guide the design in the most appropriate ways?

Summary of the Challenges• What are YOUR challenges?