Portico History

Before Portico
The history of the Portico Project stretches back to 2005. The project was initially founded by Tim Pokorny and Michael Fraser while they were students at the University of Ballarat. Frustrated with the lack of a freely available cross platform RTI, they started writing one of their own. The project was initially known as jaRTI, and after a considerable amount of internal development, the first public release was made during SimTecT in June of 2006.

Following its initial debut, jaRTI development continued to advance, with additional features, services and tools being added over the next year. The project also received a lot of favorable attention and up to the middle part of 2007 it had been downloaded more than 1300 times.

Founding Portico
As interest began to grow, it became clear that a more professional approach was necessary in order to help maintain the long-term growth of the project. As part of this process, an image change was deemed necessary, and in May 2007 the Portico Project was founded. To help this transition, Portico was the subject of funding received from the Australian Defence Simulation Office (ADSO).

The Portico name was chosen for a number of reasons, including the symbolism it invokes. A portico is an open structure attached to an entranceway of a house or building. It is typically supported by large columns and provides shelter at the entrance to the building. This metaphor fits well with the goals of the portico project to provide an open, fully supported RTI implementation. The Portico logo represents the a small roofing structure over the letters RTI, which form the supports.

The primary goal of the Portico Project is to continue the development of an open source RTI implementation, extending its functionality so that it may become a drop-in replacement for current commercial offerings. To help meet this goal it is anticipated that commercial support will eventually be offered.

Major Dates

 * October 2005: Project Start
 * Febuary 2 2006: v0.2
 * Febuary 23 2006: v0.3
 * April 16 2006: v0.4
 * June 4 2006: v0.5 (first public release)
 * August 24 2006: v0.6
 * August 28 2007: v0.7 (C++, Portico, Funding)
 * March 3 2008: v0.8 (DDM)

Planned:
 * October 2008: v0.9
 * June 2009: v1.0 (HLA 1.3 Compliant)