Message from Program Co-chairs

Abstract

We welcome you to the Ninth IEEE International Symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real-Time Applications. Each year sees an increase in the number of papers submitted to DS-RT, reflecting the growth of distributed simulation, especially in emerging areas such as collaborative virtual environments. This year we received nearly 100 papers from 17 different countries. The quality of papers presented at the conference is ensured through an acceptance rate of one in three and a program committee of renowned leading experts in distributed simulation and virtual reality. DS-RT provides an excellent forum in which academic researchers and practitioners in industry and defense can meet to discuss issues and challenges related to this interdisciplinary research area. We hope that we have arranged an even more exciting program this year, with two keynote speakers who are prominent in their research areas. In his talk “Distributed Simulation of Vehicular Networks,” Richard Fujimoto (Georgia Institute of Technology) will discuss how the widespread deployment of smart vehicles will revolutionize the transportation industry and the challenges in experimenting with and evaluating vehicular networks through simulation. Geoffrey Fox (Indiana University) will compare current approaches to Grid architectures and the use of Grids to efficiently support real-time simulation including audio-video conferencing in his talk, “Grids for the GiG and Real Time Simulations.” The symposium papers fit within the general themes of large-scale simulation, collaborative virtual environments and real-time applications. At a lower level of abstraction, the sessions comprise papers concerning: distributed simulation, COTS simulation package interoperability, agents and simulation, modeling and simulation methodology, networks and peer-to-peer, collaborative virtual environments, collaborative working environments, and real-time applications. Following on from last year’s highly successful panel discussion, Simon Taylor, from Brunel University in the UK, is organizing a panel “Revisiting Distributed Simulation and the Grid,” in which our two keynote speakers will participate. This year we will again award a Best Paper at the symposium. After the reviews of all papers were received, a subcommittee was formed and the following papers were nominated: