Subject: Working Group on Synthetic Environments Formed

From: Steve Carson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 12:40:46 -0600

SC24 Members:

The JTC 1 Imaging and Graphics Business Team has just formed its first
Working Group with many more to follow over the next few weeks. Please
publicize this WG in you national organizations and encourage interested
parties to participate. Especially note the short time frame for this work
(completion by 30 September 1998).

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The Imaging and Graphics Business Team has formed a new Working Group on
Synthetic Environments. For more information or to join please consult:

  http://www.globalcollaboration.org/jtc1/igbt/sewg.html

Synthetic Environments Working Group Charter

Scope

A synthetic environment is a representation of a natural or artificial
environment, whose components are located in reference to a well-defined
spatial origin and coordinate system. For representation of the natural
environment, generally, this origin is either the sun or earth, however any
celestial body (or even imaginary body) can be used.  An important special
case is that of geo-spatial locations referenced to the earth (including
its surface, oceans, atmosphere and near space.) A synthetic environment
includes terrain and terrain features (both natural and man-made); models
of objects such as avatars, and certain localized features of the
environment with  complexity in structure or behavior (e.g., vehicles,
buildings, smoke plumes, and tornados); the ocean (both on and below the
surface); the ocean bottom including features (both natural and man-made)
on the ocean floor; the atmosphere including environmental phenomena; and
near space. In addition, a synthetic environment includes the attributes of
the objects in the environment, as well as the relationships amongst the
types of objects. The representation includes constraints necessary to
insure correct automatically generated behaviors. These include topological
and rule-based constraints.

The purpose of the Synthetic Environments Working Group is to address all
aspects of support for the creation, authoring and interchange of synthetic
environments. The scope of this Working Group includes, but is not
necessarily limited to, support for the creation of applications in these
areas:

   1. simulation and modeling, including simulation based design; 
   2. entertainment, including single user and multi-user games; and 
   3. instruction and training. 

The title "Synthetic Environments" is chosen to be neutral to:

   1. media, (versus, for example, "Graphical Environments"); 
   2. technology (for example, "world" is a VRML specific term for a
similar concept);

and to avoid the over-used term "Virtual" (for example, "Virtual
Environments").

Modeling includes:

   1. the descriptions of the objects within such environments, for example
their graphical and/or aural manifestations; and
   2. selected aspects of the behavior of the objects within the
environment, including interactions amongst the simulated entities, as well
as interactions between the environment and such entities, where the
entities respond to events in the synthetic environment or influence the
synthetic environment.  The mechanism(s) to be used for behavior
description are to be determined, and will likely include at least
scripting and programming language based representations.

Specific aspects to be addressed or considered include:

     1. representational polymorphism; 
     2. conceptual models of the represented objects; 
     3. data interchange formats;
     4. APIs for reading, writing and/or accessing Synthetic Environments; and
     5. real-time interchange of environmental information.

Today, synthetic environments are created through a costly and
time-consuming authoring process resulting in a platform-dependent database
that supports a single application. One goal of the standards to be
proposed by this working group is to enable re-use and sharing of such data
between authoring systems, thereby eliminating the need to re-create each
database from scratch and also enabling the creation of a market for
lower-cost, shared synthetic environments and their components.

Goals and deliverables

1. Determine if it is feasible to adopt International Standards in the area
of synthetic environments. This includes determining:

   a.the maturity of technical approaches to synthetic environments; 
   b.the degree of international consensus on the best technical
approach(es); 
   c.the benefits (or detriments) of standardization in this area.

2. As with all IGBT work, the plan is wherever possible to: 

   a.identify and harvest work already proven in commercial practice
outside ISO and IEC, and 
   b.transpose that work into International Standards making only necessary
and mutually agreed changes.

3. The working group will determine the feasibility of using the proven
work on the SEDRIS (Synthetic Environment Data Representation & Interchange
Specification) project as a basis for one class of standards to be proposed
by this working group. For more information about SEDRIS, please consult:
www.sedris.org .

4. Identify all other feasible base documents and approaches (if any exist).

5. Write one or more New Work Item Proposals (NPs) for standards
development so support synthetic environments.

Time line for completion

1. Complete work by 30 September 1998 and forward a NP to JTC 1 for ballot.

Criteria for success

1. If the group determines that an approach based on SEDRIS is feasible,
then creation of an NP. 

2. If the group determines that an approach based on SEDRIS is not
feasible, then a report documenting that fact to the IGBT with
recommendations for further efforts (if any) in this area.

Working Group Leader

Karen Williams, National Imagery and Mapping Agency
[email-masked]
Telephone +1-703-824-3454

Steve Carson
Chair, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 24
Computer Graphics and Image Processing
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Steve Carson                 phone:   +1-505-521-7399
GSC Associates Inc.          fax:     +1-505-521-9321
5272 Redman Road             e-mail:  [email-masked]
Las Cruces, NM 88011 USA
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