Much of the visual interest of the virtual environment comes from the synthetic bicyclists. Each actor is dynamically simulated and pedals in a realistic fashion around the race course. We have implemented a distributed system that allows us to simulate multiple bikes in nearly real time and to display the graphical environment at 15 frames per second. The dynamic simulations are computationally intensive and are distributed one per processor on an SGI Power Challenge with 12 R8000 processors. A software barrier enforces synchronization between simulations to maintain a consistent world state via shared memory.
Graphical information is shipped via sockets to a dedicated graphics server.
Although the presence of the simulated bicyclists in the environment adds greatly to the visual appeal of the scene, we are just beginning to develop algorithms that will allow the synthetic cyclists to mimic the sophisticated racing strategies of human cyclists for drafting, blocking, and breakaways. We expect that the addition of racing strategies will result in a useful training environment by providing the user with virtual opponents and teammates and allowing the exploration of biking and team strategies for a particular race. Publications Brogan, D. C., Metoyer, R. A., and Hodgins, J. K., 1998. Dynamically Simulated Characters in Virtual Environments . IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications .