As mentioned previously, I have always thought that SITEOPS should look to become more of a hub app, with an eco-system of Connect'd apps around it.
SpatialOS, developed by Improbable, based in London has just won $500m in VC. A great vote for UK, post Brexit (or just an illustration of how rare this is and a taste of the pain ahead?). Apparently, based on solving key synchronisation problems in the financial trading and mobile phone sectors.
It provides the means to allow what it calls 'strong simulation' by networking together multiple solvers (physics, collision, traffic etc) into a big concurrent 'game engine' that is persistent and scalable.
By separating the graphics processing from the simulation engine(s), the user can log off at any time and leave the simulation engine to chug on, on the cloud.
Most of the early applications are game based, and as we know, there is a bit of buzz at the moment with VR and AR application in the BIM world, with Bentley's ContextCapture and Digital Twin offerings. I think LumenRT is also due to offer Occulus-type google support soon.
Strong simulation would offer a Digital Twin approach that is closer to PTC /Thingworx's IoT-based twinning. The keynote demo has of course elements of stuff investgated by Bentley's Applied Research group; who has gone one step further by adding Hypermodeling. It would be interesting to see if the recent tie up with Siemens will see more IoT stuff introduced into the Bentley eco-system, where there are already a few apps that are based on streaming, SCADA type models (AXSYS Process, WaterGEMS/Darwin, AECOsim Energy Simulator ?)
Strong simulation could add the platform for combining these kinds of simultion engines, and take Bentley's Analytical Modeling capabilities to the next level. Looking at this SpatailOS vid, I like the way the different simulation engine spaces appear as the user/viewpoint moves closer. This reminds me of the way Bentley consortium partner Cesium and the new ConceptStation .3sm files work.
Mstn's Reference Files have always been a big defining functionality for Bentley. By allowing the CAD data to be split up and assembled on loading in containers, the user can be very specific about his context and level of detail. With .3sm; mesh information can be packaged hierachially to allow LOD aware display, providing a much more scalable working environment.
But all that new and welcome tech only deals with the graphic info. What about the analytical info?
SITEOPS seems well placed to serve as hub application for this new larger world. It is already web-based. So, it could harness all the Cesium WebGL tools and file formats. Being web-based, I suppose it shouldn't be too difficult to host everything on Azure to leverage cloud level compute, using SpatialOS. It already has some interface connections with Bentley's civil tools. Maybe a tie up with ConceptStation, which looks like it is heavily based on LumenRT.
SITEOPS already has some experience with constraints and genetic algorithm solvers. How about adding drainage / flood modeling solvers? Environmental or Sustainability-type solvers as well? How would you layer the drainage solving onto the cut/fill solving already in SITEOPS?
Maybe Genetic Algorithms have reached their limits and Machine Learning algo's like Tensorflow neural network-type algos need to be looked at?
If you believe the stuff being said at COFES over the last few years, the big bottleneck in computer assisted design is the lack of qualified engineers that can deal with simulation. I guess the old GIGO problem is espcially relevant for all those analytical packages. The package vendors increasing have to test their algos and communicate their assumptions and working methods to their users. I suppose the only users that have the spare time and have the business case (complex large jobs) are the type of big clients that Bentley tends to have.
One nice presentation was from a guy who proposed using n-variate meshes a data structure for storing BIM information. Reasrch is based on healing BRep topology. I wonder if this kind of mesh based data structures will be akin to the type of 'matrix' live gaming repository in the cloud world that SpatialOS is building?