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The Virtual Whirl: Community guide to Virtual Worlds
Welcome to The Virtual Whirl, a new weekly Massively column covering virtual environments generally. The term 'virtual world' is slowly seeing less use, being supplanted by the more general 'virtual environment', but the world term still has a fair bit of life left in it. Virtual environments covers a whole lot of ground. From William Crowther's original efforts in 1976 that based a game in a virtual version of the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, virtual environments have been a part of gaming, artificial intelligence and behavioral research, modeling, telemetry and process control and more. Nowadays we're seeing Second Life, Blue Mars, There.com, IMVU and others trying to find places in non-game contexts, like content-development and prototyping, publishing and performance, entertainment and social, education and business; efforts that are met with varying amounts of success.
NATO seeks Second Life tenders
The NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Supreme Headquarters Allied Command Transformation is presently seeking tenders for the construction of a proof-of-concept site in a virtual environment. "The first scenario is to replicate a generic headquarters compound for a NATO operation. ... The second scenario will involve replicating the Headquarters Supreme Allied Command Transformation in Norfolk, USA. The only acceptable worlds that may provide a solution to this statement of work are Second Life by Linden Labs[sic], OLIVE by Forterra, or NEXUS by ECS." Actually, this part's a little confusing, because of the three virtual environments specified as 'acceptable', only one (Forterra's OLIVE) actually meets the minimum criteria given in the solicitation. NATO SHQACT acknowledges this in a subsequent clarification document, but is still seeking Second Life submissions anyway. As it stands, it doesn't seem like any existing Second Life developer can actually meet the stringent Defense Contract requirements in any case, and submissions close on the 8th of this month.
Increase ROI by training in virtual worlds
Forterra, makers of OLIVE virtual worlds, along with ACS Learning Services recently conducted a proof of concept in employee training using their customized systems. It's a new approach to corporate dilemmas of training large groups for as little money as possible. The experiment began with training the users on how to move their avatars to interact, thus pushing past potential problems with people being uncomfortable in the virtual space. They were then brought into the training environment where, rather than merely watching slides go by, they must move around and interact to find the answers to questions. How do they know the info got through? Tremendous feedback.
