A New Training Reality

The United States Army has been using Virtual Reality to simulate real life situations for a few years now. The importance of Virtual Reality has increased to the point where the Army is considering giving every soldier a digital doppelganger or a helmet that creates virtual training environments. Obviously the cost of providing a unit for each soldier would be immense.

Photo: David Kamm, NSRDEC

James Blake, the Army’s program executive officer for simulation, training and instrumentation says “You design an avatar that has the individual facial features of a soldier. Then you add more of what he looks like, physical attributes. When you’re in your game environment, you’d like to have the physical and mental attributes of that individual reflected in that virtual world.”

Essentially what Mr. Blake is saying is that each avatar can be customized to match each soldier’s physical performance. This would create a virtual environment that limits the soldier to whatever his abilities may be and he can get a better sense of how he can handle a particular environment.

There is always the concern that Virtual Reality can never equate to actual reality, and by giving soldiers an avatar you would essentially be training them to become better virtual soldiers or video game players as opposed to enhance their real life skills. According to Danger Room pal Peter Singer avatars “at some point, piloting a plane in combat is different from piloting a computer workstation. Just as hitting a real tennis ball is not the same as hitting the Wii version.”

Although Virtual Reality can never completely simulate reality, the technology is constantly becoming more and more sophisticated. If the US Army is seriously considering providing each soldier with one of these costly units, we must assume that the technology is good enough to improve army training.

Read original article: Army’s Virtual Reality Plan: A Digital Doppelganger for Every Soldier

2pac lives!

Are you a fan of 2pac? If you are then you have probably come across conspiracy theories that 2pac is still alive... Lets call this the Elvis phenomenon.

If I told you that 2pac performed live in front of thousands of fans at the Coachella music festival in California last week, would you believe me? Please watch this video before reading any further.

Many will call this evidence of a conspiracy. We call it a form of virtual reality.

According to the Wall Street Journal this virtual reality hologram of 2pac is actually based on a 19^th century visual effect called “Peppers’s ghost” and was first used in 1862 for a staged performance of Charles Dicken’s “The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain”.

Click here to see the full article

The Digital Domain Media Group created this particular case of virtual reality. According to chief creative officer Ed Ulbrich: "To create a completely synthetic human being is the most complicated thing that can be done. This is not found footage. This is not archival footage. This is an illusion. "In other words they were able to relive 2pac for the fans at Coachella with a genuinely authentic performance.

When this technology was first used in 1862 a glass was used to reflect a primitive, holographic figure of an actor. “A piece of glass can be both transparent and reflective at the same time, depending on how it’s situated relative to the audience” says Jim Steinmeyer, an illusion designer who writes about the history of this particular form of deception. Essentially, the angle of the mirror, if placed correctly, creates the illusion of the person reflected in a corresponding area.

The holographic image of 2pac at Coachella was developed based on his physical traits along with previously captured movements. To revive the deceased rapper the moving image(s) was then reflected on a piece of Mylar (highly reflective, lightweight plastic). Therefore the man on stage was a 2D computer generated image of 2pac reflected on plastic (it wasn’t even in 3D!!!).

At the end of the day it was not the technology that mattered to the fans at Coachella, but rather the lasting impression of a dead icons performance.

What does this mean for the rest of us moving forward? How can virtual reality affect our lives now and in the future? Could you imagine “skyping” with full virtual recreations of your friends? Can we have business meetings where multiple participants in different parts of the world can be physically present (or at least the illusion of) in one location? What if we could avoid violent riots at G-8 meetings if they met via holographic images like those of 2pac?

This is just one example of what virtual reality can do for us in today’s world. In this blog we hope to inform you about various forms of virtual reality and what it means for us today and tomorrow!