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 project offers virtual villages for soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan to practice their training skills. 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. 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. The ATEC team set out to re-create a realistic virtual environment instead.
The result is First Person Cultural Trainer (FPCT), a 3D interactive game that teaches soldiers the values and norms of Iraqi and Afghan cultures. FPCT is a serious game, which means that it is designed for purposes other than pure entertainment, in this case, cultural training. Presented annually by the National Training & Simulation Association (NTSA), the Modeling & Simulation (M&S) Awards recognize achievement in the M&S functional areas of training, analysis and acquisition, and in support of the overall M&S effort. The project is supported and sponsored by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) G-2 Intelligence Support Activity (TRISA).
More information:
http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2010/2/23-1251_Game-Trains-Soldiers-in-a-Virtual-Iraq-or-Afghanis_article.html
More information:
http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2010/2/23-1251_Game-Trains-Soldiers-in-a-Virtual-Iraq-or-Afghanis_article.html