An approach for loosely coupled discrete event simulation models and animation components

Animation techniques are used during simulation studies for verifying and validating the model, and for communication purposes to external parties. Including animation in a simulation model, often results in models that contain many references to animation specific code. Moreover, in the specific case of discrete event simulation, challenges arise due to the difference in time-bases with animation techniques that mostly have a discrete notion of time. Typical approaches to developing animation for simulation models provide tightly coupled simulation and animation components that are fine-tuned to provide acceptable results. Apart of the disadvantage of having entangled model and animation code, this also has the disadvantage of reduced flexibility that one would desire in order to be able to use other animation techniques: for instance going from 2D to 3D with modern visualization libraries. In this paper, we will present our approach for loosely coupled discrete event simulation models and animation components.