Games of War and Peace: large scale simulation over the Internet

The simulation of complex and realistic interactive virtual environments is a challenging problem in various ways. From the visualization point of view the difficulties arise from the hardware limitations for presenting a complex scene at interactive frame rates. For communications the challenge is the management of a high number of participants without sacrificing the simulation's performance. We analyze solutions that make possible the realization of simulations with high realism using consumer level equipment available today. We describe Games of War and Peace, a test bed for modeling and simulation.