Collaborative Workspaces within Distributed Virtual Environments.

In warfare, be it a training simulation or actual combat, a commanders time is one of the most valuable and fleeting resources of a military unit. Thus, it is natural for a unit to have a plethora of personnel to analyze and filter information to the decision-maker. This dynamic exchange of ideas between analyst and commander is currently not available within the distributed interactive simulation DIS community. This lack of exchange limits the usefulness of the DIS experience to the commander and his troops. This thesis addresses the commanders isolation problem through the integration of a collaborative workspace within AFITs Synthetic BattleBridge SBB as a technique to improve situational awareness. The SBBs Collaborative Workspace enhances battlespace awareness through CSCW computer supported cooperative work enabling communication technologies. The SBBs Collaborative Workspace allows the user to interact with other SBB users through the transmission and reception of public bulletins, private email, real-time chat sessions, shared viewpoints, shared video, and shared annotations to the virtual environment. Collaborative communication between SBB occurs through the use of standard and experimental DIS-compliant protocol data units. The SBBs Collaborative Workspace gives the battlespace commander the widest range of communication options available within a DIS virtual environment today.