[From the News Center of the University of Texas at Dallas]

Game Trains Soldiers in a Virtual Iraq or Afghanistan

ATEC Wins National Modeling and Simulation Award for 3D Interactive Program

Feb. 23, 2010

A training tool being developed by a research team from the Arts and Technology (ATEC) program may soon make it easier for military service men and women to perform their missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The work we’re doing has to do with the facilitation of cultural training,” said Dr. Marjorie Zielke, an assistant professor in the ATEC program and the principal investigator on the project. “The way some of that training has been done in the past and may still be done in certain areas is to build actual villages and hire actors to replicate a particular culture,” Zielke said. “That kind of approach has some limitations in the sense that it’s expensive, not everyone can attend, it’s not easily changed because it’s a physical structure, you have to work with actual actors, and so forth.”… read more. “First Person Cultural Trainer teaches soldiers in a virtual Iraq or Afghanistan”

[From www.army.mil (“The Official Homepage of the United States Army”); more information about the finalists is available here]

Image: VADER Island, a virtual world where developers submitted entries to the competition

Army announces virtual worlds challenge finalists

Mar 9, 2010
By Michelle Milliner

ORLANDO, Fla. – This week, the U.S. Army announced finalists in a competition designed to uncover new potentials in virtual worlds. The Research, Development and Engineering Command’s simulation and training center launched the Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge in August 2009 to reach a global development community and explore innovative, interactive training and analysis solutions in virtual worlds.

The contest uncovered new possibilities for using virtual worlds that may have not been considered. The U.S. Army Simulation and Training Technology Center in Orlando oversaw the competition. Evaluators included judges from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, Department of Transportation and Health and Human Services.… read more. “U.S. Army announces virtual worlds challenge finalists”

[From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Book Patrol reader blog]

Ghost Army Haunts Michigan Library

Posted by Nancy Mattoon at March 12, 2010 1:44 a.m.

An invisible army, operating in obscurity, mastering the arts of illusion, deception, and disinformation to defeat the Nazis in World War II. This could be a description of the French Resistance fighters, the band of brothers who operated in utmost secrecy under the noses of the German occupation forces, and have been called “The Army of Shadows.” But it also describes an amazing division of American troops stationed in the European Theatre: the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, AKA “The Ghost Army.” This top-secret unit, so highly classified that its very existence was denied by the Pentagon for 50 years, is finally being not just exposed but placed in the spotlight, by a Michigan Library and an award-winning documentary filmmaker.… read more. “Ghost army used arts of illusion, deception to defeat the Nazis”

[From IEEE Spectrum]

OPINION

Reflections: Driven to Distraction

Engineers created the problem of cellphones in cars, but they may not be able to solve it

BY Robert W. Lucky // January 2010

I used to feel that the ultimate aim of communications research was telepresence—creating the perfect illusion of being where you’re not. However, now I’m thinking that we did too good a job of creating this illusion and that the law of unintended consequences is taking hold. Sometimes you need instead to enforce the perfect sense of being exactly where you are at the moment—like when you’re behind the wheel of a car hurtling down the highway. Maybe instead of telepresence (distant presence) we need plesiopresence (near presence).

The problem is technological distraction. It’s becoming serious, and there is no solution in sight. Laws against using phones in cars aren’t working, because the problem isn’t that you’re putting a phone to your ear; it’s that you’re putting your brain somewhere else.… read more. “Telepresence and cell phones in cars”

[From Gadget Venue; video demonstrations are here (0:15) and here (1:44)]

iKat Augmented Reality App

by Matthew Newill on March 10, 2010

iKat is quite a cool looking Augmented Reality application that requires no real-world prompt to function correctly. Normally when augmented reality is used a place card is held up with an image on it which the phone can then lock on to and replace with the 3D rendered model. In the case if the iKat it just takes a quick scan of what the camera is looking at and can figure out where to place the 3D object.

The iKat application is basically just a cat that walks across a keyboard when holding the phone up to it, but the idea behind it is really what we are interested in here.… read more. “iKat markerless augmented reality app”