Are you prepared for DIS 8? We are.

Presently, the specification for DIS 8 is being developed. Although past versions of DIS have for the most part been backwards compatible, this is NOT going to be the case with DIS 8! From our analysis, the are two possibilities of what will happen if a simulator not prepared for DIS 8 receives a DIS 8 packet. Best case, the packet is ignored... worst case, the simulator will crash. The reasons?

1) The PDU Header which has remained unchanged since the introduction of DIS has drastically changed.

2) The layout of the all packets has changed. In most cases the base packets are much shorter and use Variable records for information not contained within the base packet.

3) Byte ordering is no longer the same.

DIS Appliance Co. was the first known company to generate, transmit, receive, record, replay, and analyze DIS 8 packets. The format of the packets was based on preliminary design specification for DIS 8. Yes, it's not the final version, but with the way our software is written, if anything changes with regards to the formatting of the packets, we can adapt to a majority of these changes in a VERY short amount of time (i.e. an hour or two).

In order to begin preliminary testing with DIS 8, we will be offering DIS 8 recordings that can be replayed over the network so that you can see how your software and/or simulator will react to DIS 8 packets. The DIS Record/Replay capability will be available through the DIS Protocol Analyzer as well as a DIS Record/Replay Standalone Utility that is currently under development.

The DIS Record/Replay Standalone Utility will have the same Record/Replay functionality that is currently contained in our DIS Protocol Analyzer, but at a fraction of the price. The DIS Record/Replay Standalone Utility is more of an end-item piece of software that you would tie into via an API, but it does not have the diagnostic capabilities that are contained in the DIS Protocol Analyzer. We feel that once you see the DIS Protocol Analyzer, you will feel that it's diagnostic capabilities are much more in tune with what you are going to need to thoroughly vet your software in preparation for DIS 8.