Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/196923
m mODELLING & SIMULATION INTERFACING THE PHYSICAL AND VIRTUAL WORLDS Training in a simulated environment is the way of the future. While it will never completely replace the invaluable live experience, it is more cost-effective and able to recreate scenarios many live exercises simply cannot. As successive generations enter the military having grown up in a gaming world of virtual and augmented reality on an array of stationary and mobile devices, their expectations will drive the army, navy and air force further down this road. However, there are still some hurdles to overcome as we interface man and machine in virtual environments. Carl Daniels is the vice president of products and solutions for Bluedrop Performance Learning in Halifax. Bluedrop's state-of-the-art training and simulation centre for land, sea and air has developed and adopted some of the most advanced uses of modern gaming technologies. It's also provided Daniels the vehicle to consider some of the issues of human-machine interface. Q What's the challenge? We use a lot of virtual reality technology to teach procedural things, such as a hoist mission or a door gun procedure in an aircraft. But often in this virtual world, you need to interact with things in a physical environment. So in the case of a door gun, we actually provide the physical gun and then represent it in the game. But there are times when an operator needs to work with a control panel, for example, which becomes very difficult in a virtual environment. There are workarounds such as switching back and forth between the virtual and the physical worlds, where maybe you flip up your goggles and interact with the physical panel in front of you. But that extra transition from the virtual to the physical can be considered negative learning because it is a step that wouldn't normally be there. There is some interesting technology we have considered, such as data gloves, so you are actually still interacting with the panel but it is a virtual panel in front of you. It may also be possible to construct the environment so that if you are close to a panel, your virtual reality projection goes away and you now see the physical panel through your goggles. That's the challenge. The problems really have to do with interfacing between those virtual and physical worlds. Until we can overcome that, I think simulation will be challenged to address those concerns. Q How generational is this? Does greater use of helmetmounted displays in "gaming" help acclimatize future users to that situation and perhaps reduce the challenge? Oculus Rift is a new technology that provides a head-mounted display for X-Box or PlayStation. It's a couple hundred bucks and ready for the consumer market. There will be consumer applications for Oculus Rift within the next few months. So there will be a generation of kids growing up who are used to working in that virtual environment. And with Google Glass technology and aug16 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013 www.vanguardcanada.com