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Connext seamlessly stitches together new and legacy simulators and systems integration labs while adding humans and hardware in the loop to create new Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) environments. It provides rapid response times for real, augmented, virtual and mixed realities in a single lab or across multiple sites.
Connext is based on a peer-to-peer Publish/Subscribe model that allows simulation subsystems to share data without requiring unique interfaces for each new system across different transport protocols. The new system merely needs to subscribe to the desired dataset. This frees application developers from having to create custom data-sharing code within subsystems, enabling rapid integration and the ability to expand new variables for each training exercise.
Securing Complex Simulation Environments
Modern simulators and training systems must share real-time data with operational systems, which presents a new level of security and performance challenges. Connext® Secure is the world’s first data-centric framework to address security down to the individual data object level, while still maintaining real-time response. It shares information only with authorized systems and participants, preventing blanket access for all users.
For example, when creating new joint simulators from many different legacy simulators, the use of Connext Secure enables the new system to classify different data types, thereby creating a system that has Multiple Levels of Security (MLS) all running over a single network.
Using Connext with Existing Simulation Interoperability Standards
Traditional simulation-based standards, such as Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS); High-Level Architecture (HLA); and the Test and Training Enabling Architecture (TENA), are all well-known for their standard simulation data types, which have been used in simulators for decades. However, these standards are all being challenged by new requirements for security, performance and scalability as next-generation simulators become more complex.
Connext provides plug-and-play interoperability and real-time performance at scale across Wide Area Networks (WANs), plus the fine-grained security that is typically lacking in legacy simulation standards. Connext can also seamlessly interoperate with simulators that were built using existing simulation standards. Connext allows these new ‘system of systems’ to securely work together, either over a Local Area Network (LAN) in a single lab or distributed across the globe using any network. This approach increases the throughput and minimizes the latency, so that the total number of entities can be increased dramatically without sacrificing performance.
And to help decrease unnecessary network traffic, Connext can take existing Federation Object Models (FOMs) or Programmable Data Units (PDUs) and map them to DDS topics, so that more fine-grained, real-time Quality of Service (QoS) can be applied to the data.
Customer Use Cases
Kratos
The Reconfigurable Virtual Collective Training System (RVCTS) incorporates the latest mixed reality technology to deliver the highest immersive fidelity of any collective training system. By leveraging Connext in their RVCTS, Kratos can ensure reliable backend communication among hardware and software real-time systems.
National Advanced Driving Simulator
The U.S. Army and the University of Iowa jointly developed several high-fidelity simulators to demonstrate how military vehicles and components can be tested and evaluated using Virtual Proving Ground (VPG) technology. Connext provided the software for real-time, low-latency data interchange to manage the many simulation components working concurrently.
FORCE Multi-Ship Simulation
Force Technology created the world's first system to provide a complete environment for training tugboat captains in maneuvering large vessels such as oil and gas tankers into restricted spaces using multiple boats. Connext delivered the connectivity framework that offered real-time data interchange between subsystems, without requiring the developers to know specific code for each subsystem added to the application.
CAE Sim XXI Full Flight Simulator
Pilots around the world consider CAE’s Sim XXI full-flight simulator to be the closest simulation of the true experience of flight. It delivers breakthrough visual realism, precise cockpit replication, high-fidelity avionics simulation and flight and ground-handling characteristics that are indistinguishable from the aircraft. Connext helps to achieve this level of full-flight simulation, which involves a variety of complex subsystems sharing and processing data in real-time.
US Navy HiPer-D
The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) Dahlgren Division needed to investigate how to apply advanced technologies and concepts to the Naval Surface Ship Anti-Air Warfare (AAW) problem domain. Connext was used by the U.S. Navy High Performance Distributed Computing Project (HiPer-D) to create test bed demonstrations, based fully on COTS technology, that enabled NAVSEA to investigate technologies supporting real-time, distributed, scalable, fault-tolerant and heterogeneous computing systems that can be used in combat systems.
Additional Resources
RTI Blog
Can DDS Help Solve the Distributed Simulation Integration Challenge?
Connecting the Pieces: Integrating FACE-Conformant Portable Component with a Simulation Environment
Connext Podcast
The Future of Simulation is in Real-Time Connectivity
News
Real-Time Innovations Announces Partnership with VT MAK for the Training and Simulation Market