Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS)

DIS is a communications standard for conducting real-time platform-level wargaming across multiple host computers. This mature protocol is used by many military organizations worldwide.

To ensure secure and accurate communication between host computers, simulation state information is encoded in formatted messages, known as Protocol Data Units (PDUs).  PDUs are exchanged between hosts using existing transport layer protocols.

The current version of the DIS application protocol defines 67 different PDU types that encapsulate all levels of information about a simulation, including entity states, logistics, radio communications, and warfare.  A simulation application must support specified PDUs to send/receive this type of information over a distributed simulation.

High Level Architecture (HLA)

The HLA is a general purpose architecture for distributed computer simulation systems. Using HLA, computer simulations can communicate to other computer simulations regardless of the computing platforms. Communication between simulations is managed by a runtime infrastructure (RTI).  The RTI provides a programming library and an application programming interface (API) that are compliant with the interface specification.

Common Image Generator Interface (CIGI)

CIGI is an open standards interface designed to promote a common method of communication between a host device and an image generator (IG).  Image generators often have a proprietary interface that is labor intensive and expensive to integrate which makes CIGI crucial for simulation users.