Augmented reality training
using augmented and immersive virtual reality for training factory workers. read more at http://ips.virtual-plant.com/materials.html
Level Up, Open Grid standardisation
Very roughly drafted, but we have a IETF group to start work on interoperability for virtual worlds, the MMOX working group. Its goals and milestones concern communication, scenery setting (primitives), authentication and intergrid teleportation to be worked on between now and june 2010. “Current proposed work items for the group include the Linden Lab Structured Data (LLSD) draft. “
Related is this article from the Intel blog with questions on how digital content may have a differing value depending on which grid you are on. Though the draft proposal for the working group does not mention it, an Open Grid standard is also going to have to deal with standardising trade for in world currencies that have real world values. Someone needs to answer the question on how much 1000 World of Warcraft gold is worth in Pixie Hollow Acorns…
Wearable computing
We still interact with our data mostly through the means of the keyboard and mouse. touchscreens and data visualisation through 3D are helping us to manipulate our data in a more ‘natural’ way. Here a short mute movie on applications on wearable computers, allowing the user to turn any surface into a manipuable interface.
Health care and virtual worlds
Palomar West Medical Campus has been built in Second Life, but not in RL yet. its an architectural simulation of things to come. very impressive to visit.
NATO Wants Sim Afghanistan to Test War Plans
NATO commanders in Afghanistan want a virtual version of the country, to test out battle plans and forecast future unrest.
Afghanistan’s often-explosive mix of tribal, ethnic and religious power politics has been catching outsiders off-guard for the last couple-thousand years. This time around, America and her western allies are trying two controversial, competing approaches, to prepare for the surprises. One embeds in combat units social scientists, trained in making foreign cultures more understandable. The other dumps everything that’s known about the country into a software model — and then watches what develops in this Sim Afghanistan.
Last last week, NATO began its search for for the newest “simulation capability.” This one should “be able to model the Afghanistan engagement space in the Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure and Information (PMESII) domains,” a call for white papers notes. With all that information in hand, war planners can then “assess and validate how specific future events or actions could impact on the current situation through the creation and simulation of a hypothetical/simulated environment.”
Of course, this assumes the program is loaded with next-to-fool-proof data on Afghan economics, politics, and culture — and understands how all those various elements interact. Not bad for a “COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] solution which may require limited development work.”
Veteran counterinsurgents have long been skeptical of how accurate these models can really be. “Wait a minute, you can’t tell me who’s going to a win a football game. And now you’re going to replicate free will?” retired Lt. Col. John Nagl, who helped write the Army’s manual on defusing insurgencies, told Danger Room in 2007. “They are smoking something they shouldn’t be,” retired Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper quipped to Science magazine. “Only those who don’t know how the real world works will be suckers for this stuff.”
Still, coders and researchers at Lockheed Martin, Carnegie Mellon University, SAIC, BAE Systems, and Purdue University have all lined up, to make similar sim societies.
White papers for these new models, NATO says, “are due no later than 25 February 2009 at 1600 hours Eastern Standard Time.”
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