1. A computer simulation environment for simulating a physical system on a distributed computer network, comprising: a simulation container providing an execution environment for plug-in applications and communication services to other containers residing on different computers, the simulation container providing a run loop management function; a views container in data communication with the simulation container and graphically displaying attributes of one or more objects within the execution environment; at least one participant object instantiated in the simulation container; and an interface means, incorporated into the participant object, for communication of information between the participant object and the simulation container.