Last week, I went to the World’s Largest Modeling and Simulation Training Conference in Orlando, Florida. As always, it was amazing. Since taking photographs is frowned upon (but allowed in limited cases), let me try to paint the picture for you of what this experience is like. When you step into the convention center (the new half) you see exhibit booths that are at least 2 stories tall, with large flat screen televisions or curved projection screens. You hear the “Blam! Whack! Pop! Hisssssss, Vrmmmm…” of people taking simulators for a whirl. The overall size of the show floor seems to be at least equal to two American football fields – probably more. There aren’t statistics available for this year yet – but last year they had over 19,000 people from 61 countries.

If you haven’t been around this crowd before, you might be surprised to know how friendly and cheerful this group of professionals is. This is a very serious business, primarily focused on designing safe and effective training for military forces. But the people are exceedingly polite, friendly, inclusive and helpful. While a lot of business is done here, many of the exhibitors also understand that part of their mission at this show is to educate others in the field. You’ll find many people willing to spend time explaining their technology – how it works, who it benefits most and what learning challenges it is best suited to. So, if you are not personally in possession of a multi-million dollar budget, no worries – you will still be treated as a respected field professional.

So, here’s the rundown of my favorite experiences at the show this year.

Presenter

I got to be a presenter – which rocked. Would you like to see the slides? Fill the form at the end of the article and I’ll send them to you. I enjoyed being up on stage, talking about something I care passionately about – and sharing knowledge that my colleagues can really use. Seeing the smiling faces and nodding heads of the audience members was gratifying. That we ran out of time before I could answer all their questions – and that I was swamped by people wanting to talk to me afterward – well, it felt good. I’ve made some new friends who also care about effective use of virtual worlds in learning and am looking forward to future collaborations and exciting projects.

Author

I was also a paper author. I got to be a presenter because the review committee rated my paper so highly. Use the form at the end of this page to request your copy of the paper – or – if you are more of a hard core edu-geek, you might also like to pick up a copy of the full dissertation.

Handgun Sim

I did some practice shooting in a handgun simulator. I scored a “B” on a scale that goes from “A” (perfect) to the equivalent of a “D” (no guns for you). I was pretty pleased with my performance in the sim – considering that I don’t shoot guns in real life. The practice gun was a real 9mm that had been fitted with a laser (in place of real ammunition) and a CO cartridge (to create realistic kickback). I paid serious attention to my instructor who taught me how to safely hold the gun. He did warn me if I didn’t hold it right, it would break my thumb. I’m glad to report – no injuries. I used to play billiards while thinking about geometric paths the balls would take depending on how I hit the cue, where the cue would hit the target ball and how it might ricochet off other balls or the edge walls. This was rather similar – you line up the sites with the target and squeeeeeeeze. I admit, I kinda liked it. Looking forward to doing this again next year.

Hamster Ball Sim

Okay – it’s not a simulation of life in a hamster’s exercise ball – but you will look like you are in a human-size hamster ball when you are trying out this sim. You stand facing a hole opening in the plastic mesh ball and slowly step forward as the handler rotates the ball slowly. Then you step up, inside the ball, and take a few steps forward which rotates the opening up to where the handler can close it. Then you put on a headset, which you adjust to proper snugness by rotating a dial on the back. The headset blocks out all view of the real world and shows you the 3D virtual world in which you are faced with fighting red alien creatures that appear to be giant red roaches that are bipedal. You use a small handheld controlling that has a few controls that aid in navigation and one that is the trigger. I found the experience very interesting.

One of the biggest challenges in trying to use virtual world sims for training on tasks that involve walking long distances is giving the learner enough physical space to experience what it will be like to walk-through the real 3D space in which they’ll be fighting. Different possible solutions are out there, some of which include: (a) multi-directional treadmills, (b) large areas of real space, and (c) the hamster ball! Most walking sim technologies are demo’d by their owners. The hamster ball was highly accessible – we could actually jump in and try it. My personal experience with it was thrilling and unsettling. I really want this technology to work. I felt off-balance most of the time because to move in any direction you are always stepping upward like you are on an elliptical trainer. They advised me to take small steps, but I felt like I could not get the ball to move unless I took larger steps – which made me feel like I was going to lose my balance and fall down. Most likely, I had gotten into the ball after hundreds of others – and by this time, the trigger was not functioning very well. Most of the time when I wanted to shoot, I couldn’t. I will check this out again next year. And a few wise words to the hamster ball company – you need some level of branding at your booth. What is your company name? Why wasn’t there more than the one handler staffing your booth? Why weren’t business cards out? Ouch.

Be an avatar (male only)

I stopped a few times at the Organic Motion booth to see what they are offering in avatars used in training exercise. They had an excellent (creative and very funny) professional actor playing the role of the avatars, but also encouraged interested parties to jump in and try on an avatar skin. So, here’s what it’s like. You step into a white box and there are cameras looking at you from all angles. To start you stand in the center of the booth, with your feet about shoulder width apart and raise your arms to shoulder level (starting avatar position). When the cameras can see you’ve assumed this position, it snaps an avatar image over the top of your image – and now when you move, the avatar moves. Some of the cameras are trained in your face and will move the avatars face to match yours. Now, I experienced some issues with these avatars – which I am told is a result of the difference in body size from me (normal woman – little) to the sim character (normal man – larger). So, when I moved my arms in perfectly normal and simple ways – the avatar was thrust into physically impossible beyond-yoga contortions. One of my arms was able to go through my head and through my torso. The general movement of the face was minimal. I was not able to get the face to express, and the mouth movement was your basic up/down flapping like a puppet. Again, I was told that this was due to me being a smaller form than what their avatar was built for. Which leads me to wonder – who is building sims for our smaller warfighters? If a COTS video game can detect the size and gender of a player and adjust the avatar to the right size and gender….why can’t we provide that to our smaller warfighers? In their next upgrade to their code, they plan to have articulation in the hands. Currently, the hands are stuck in a neutral open position. I’m looking forward to seeing this company again next year – and expecting to see an exponential gain in their capabilities to make avatars work for everyone – even outliers.

Medical Simulation

A few years back, I worked on a training course that was to help government organizations detect and prevent terrorist attacks. That work included real footage of the carnage seen immediately after a bomb. It was not my favorite project ever. But, when I saw the medical simulation area (with apologies to the company whose name I do not recall), I saw realistic mannequins of warfighters who had been struck down. There were bones sticking out, blood gushing. You could see the warfighter mannequins had some realistic combinations of injuries that would help the medic understand what was the source of the injuries. I count myself lucky that we were not there when they were doing a live sim. The owners of this sim mentioned that, because it’s important to get warfighters accustomed to their real environment, their sim includes flashes of light, sounds of exploding ordinance and moans of the injured. They also have a feature that pumps the smell of burning human flesh into the surgical tent. I’ve always been curious about how we can pair smell with learning – since smell is demonstrated in psychology literature to be the strongest link to our memories. I’d been thinking it would be nice to see it as fruit-scented scratch and sniff stickers that would help a learner perform better on a traditional exam.

For next year’s wishlist:
More time to attend presentations. There were so many educational sessions that I would have found interesting, but there wasn’t enough time in my schedule to attend them. I am looking forward to working my way through the show CD – which contains all the papers from this year. I hope to have the time to share the best insights from those papers.

Request files – or contact the author