Thank you to our Sponsors Virtual Heroes (ARA) and Dynepic !
Participate in our VR/AR Global Summits in June and Sept/Oct
Attend our Defense Committee online meets!
Given the world’s current pandemic situation with the need for preparedness in a socially distanced world, it is imperative for our Defense and Intelligence community to have the tools to be able to deploy true-scale situational awareness, training and simulations at the time of need.
Our goal was to provide an in-depth report of immersive technology companies currently doing work in Defense & Intelligence that are able to meet the growing demands of M&S, visualization, collaboration, training solutions and beyond.
Foreword by Virtual Heroes, a Division of ARA
Distance. The pandemic has made this the norm.
We’re social distancing. In-person meetings have been cancelled. The progression of innovation has been challenged without opportunities to sit in a room together and bounce around ideas.
What about distance learning? In the defense industry at least, remote training isn’t new. It has seen an evolution over the years; fading away are the sleep-inducing PowerPoint-based training classes of yesteryear to make way for engaging, input-driven, immersive learning environments.
Training in a virtual environment provides improved context and reference to training activities, versus text-based, multiple-choice, or 2D approaches. The opportunity for learners to familiarize themselves with the spatial elements of an operational environment is crucial. By rendering a full 3D environment in a realtime, high-fidelity game engine technology like the Unreal Engine 4, the learner has the ability to understand not only the required steps for various procedures, but also the relative locations or positions they must move to for successful task completion. This avoids artificial transitions or cuts from one task to the next, which could disorient or cause the learner to lose the context of the training scenario.
To improve Warfighter training, the military has adopted scenario based immersive training environments, which emulate gameplay of popular console games. One such software trainer is ARA’s Post Attack Reconnaissance (PAR) course for the US Air Force. PAR trains and certifies US Airmen in what to do in the event of a chemical, biological, nuclear, radiological or explosive attack on an air base. The course aims to identify the purpose of PAR teams, understand the policies and directives governing them, know-how PAR teams fit in to the incident command structure, and be fully aware of their roles and responsibilities as PAR team members.
The immersive training environment features a responsive 3D setting that simulates conventional and chemical attacks in pre and post-attack missions. We are privileged to have worked on this project.
We are honored to support this Defense Forum report and to work alongside all of these exceptionally gifted, visionary companies in solving our Warfighters’ challenges today. As serious games specialists, our goal is to lead virtual learning into the future. We believe training should be easily accessed, experienced, and customized, for end-users, administrators, and trainers.
Training should scale from single player individualized sessions to instructor-led classes with a broad base of users. Trainees must be able to access content on-demand, 24/7 from a web browser, mobile device, or lightweight training station, regardless of their location. To address performance and bandwidth constraints, training platforms should endeavor to run on “trailing-edge” computer systems, with low network bandwidth and user hardware requirements. Data-driven architectures should enable administrators to create, modify, and remove in-game content quickly and easily. Technologies should integrate easily into learning management systems and web portals providing customized access to training content.
A key element in advancing training technologies is seamless integration of team-based training on top of individual scenarios. By supporting remote learner collaboration, including voice communication and visualization/recognition of every learner in the virtual space, significant immersive virtual training experiences will expand across a much wider domain of learning scenarios.
When expanding this experience to a fully-immersive 3D virtual head-mounted display approach, true Virtual Reality is achieved and the learner experiences a greatly increased opportunity to focus on their tasks at hand. Continuing to blend virtual and live training environments through intelligent combinations of VR and AR technologies will enable us to solve ever more challenging problems for the Warfighter for years to come.
In this time of global uncertainty, let us continue our mission to serve the defense community, delivering solutions that accomplish their objectives and lead to more exciting new possibilities. Stay safe. Happy innovating, even if from a distance.
ARA VP and Virtual Heroes Division Manager (Virtual Heroes is a Division of ARA)
Foreword by Dynepic, Inc.
“The US will be investing as much as $11B USD by 2022 intoVR/AR training systems, and becoming a primary focus of military innovation.”
Those in the M&S community supportingWarfighters in the US Military with training and operational solutions have witnessed some major shifts in the needs of theDoDover the past few years; the Covid-19 global pandemic has only accelerated these needs.
The first is a shift from legacy technology that is outdated, expensive, immobile, and requires extensive time and funding to maintain, to the need for lighter, more agile technology that can be easily updated to remain relevant and deployed where and when the Warfighter needs it at a lower cost. This is whereVR/AR technology comes into play and we have seen the increase in these technologies present in conferences in recent years.
These condshift is from the need for proprietary do-all platforms and programs, developed and run by a single defense contractor, to modern training systems with an ecosystem"toolbox" that the DoD can choose from, made of common building blocks that can integrate with each other into a modular, open systems architecture (MOSA). This openly innovative, collaborative VR/AR training ecosystem requires a secure, digital infrastructure with open APIs/SDK that supports collaboration between companies as well as with the DoD to ensure these systems and the ecosystem as a whole are agile enough to adapt to the DoD’s evolving requirements. This need has been top of mind for DoD leaders and is echoed in recent US Military strategic documents.
The U.S. Air Force must work differently with other Department of Defense stakeholders, Congress, and traditional and emerging industry partners to streamline processes and incentivize intelligent risk-taking in support of the war fighter and the Nation.
Navigating the challenging times ahead requires effective collaboration among all stakeholders to acknowledge, balance, and share risk overtime—now and into the future. (p.5)
Based on these shifts, I have a few predictions about the requirements and outcomes for future success of companies with VR/AR products in the Defense sector:
Optimize For All Users: The needs of theWarfighters must be considered as these emerging technologies are being designed and developed. This means ensuring that the user experience of VR/AR, both hardware and software, is flexible and optimized for all users. Gone are the days where technology that supported only military-aged males was good enough.
Focus and Collaborate: Companies must continue to innovate, but with focus, to contribute the best products in their specialty, and then partner with other companies whose products are complimentary in support of a greater ecosystem. Whether your expertise lies in development of AR or VR apps, headsets, haptic gloves, AI models, instructional systems design support, etc.,we predict that the most successfulVR/AR companies will be the ones that focus on what they do best and are able to collaborate well with others to provide even more optimal combined capabilities for theWarfighters.
Create New Capabilities: Bringing all of these complimentary products and services from various companies together will create capabilities for Warfighters that would not be possible with stove-piped systems. For example, when AR and VR training apps are integrated with a secure, open, agnostic LMS platform via APIs, courses made up of multivendor, multi-media content can be curated, student performance data can be stored in a common data repository, and AI models can analyze this data to truly personalize learning, not just within applications, but across them.
Enable Rapid Innovation: This VR/AR ecosystem of the future will include a common architecture, playbook, and open APIs, democratizing the ability to support immersive training creation and optimal use of VR/AR(e.g. using it to train different knowledge and skills as appropriate for optimal training effectiveness) so that Warfighter needs can be met at the speed of relevance.
Ultimately, this ecosystem and pipeline of VR/AR will support cutting edge training and operations and will adapt to the changing needs of theWarfighters because the companies and individuals with the best products who work closely with each other and with the DoD will rise to the top. It is certainly an exciting time to be in theVR/AR field, especially in the Defense sector, and we at Dynepic look forward to working with many of you to Invent the Future!
Director ofPartnerships and Growth Dynepic, Inc.
