Christopher Chambers, with the Juxtopia Group, presented on a virtual sim that occurs in real 3D space. Live fire combat involves some muscle memory, similar to marksmanship.

Based on research into sports psychology and with an eye towards fully exploiting cutting-edge technologies, a traning was created to sustain and improve live fire combat skills: the speed of engagement, identification and acquisition of the target, and the accuracy.

Because of the need to engage actual physical muscle memory, this sim occurs in real space, in buildings, with live fire. This means that the learners are in real uniforms and using real weaponry. The virtuality piece comes in the photo-realistic portrayal of real-world scenes with potential enemies in various contexts. These projections are life-size and are portrayed from a one-eyed projector. A thermal camera in the ceiling may capture thermal signatures of up to 1/100 of a degree. Sensors in the wall pick up where the bullets hit, and that relates then to feedback going to the computerized system.

The placing of the learners in physical space was done to emulate the stress of live fire / potential lethality. This was also to enhance the fidelity of the simulated practice - well beyond the paper targets of the past.

The learners also face challenges - in terms of differentiation of combatants and non-combatants and to maintain safety for themselves and their colleagues. That said, in a sense, these sims bring in 20-year-old technologies and more recent ones in creative ways.

Another benefit here was the issue of shooting at moving targetry. This sim would use 40-foot walls (made up of four ten-foot screens).

Future Phases

Chambers discussed the possibility of running a simultaneous game in two real "shoothouses", synced up, so that teams may actually play against each other without injuries but while using live fire. While this project is in its first phase, the developers are moving towards more realistic physics in terms of bodies hit by gunfire, what wounds look like, and more realistic sounds and possibly even smells - to lower the trauma and fears of new soldiers. One challenge they faced was with depth perception - in that the virtual wall didn't quite equal the physical wall. Having an in-game camera that would sync up with the computerized output every few seconds for correct perspective addressed this issue. They also are considering using voice recognition software to capture some of the intense vocalizations during that situation and better improve communications in that scenario. They may have body armor that pings if they are digitally "hit" by the digital avatars. This would involve technologies that allow for position tracking. Much of this build was using off-the-shelf technologies brought together for a synergistic training experience. Holograph technology is not going to be ready anytime soon, though, he said. An audience member asked about popups in the middle of the room, and Chambers mentioned that they do sometimes put furniture and other elements inside the space - so it's not all just images on the walls. They want to be careful not to embed negative training in the sim.