Future trends in distributed simulation and distributed virtual environments: Results of a peer study

This paper reports main results of a peer study on future trends in distributed simulation and distributed virtual environments (Strassburger et al. 2008). The peer study was based on the opinions of more than 60 experts which were collected by means of a survey and personal interviews. The survey collected opinions concerning the current state-of-the-art, relevance, and research challenges that must be addressed to advance and strengthen these technologies to a level where they are ready to be applied in day-to-day business in industry. Most important result of this study is the observation that as research areas, both distributed simulation and distributed virtual environments are attributed a high future practical relevance and a high economic potential. At the same time the study shows that the current adoption of these technologies in the industrial sector is rather low. The study analyses reasons for this observation and identifies open research challenges.