Situated Research's Blog

Future athletes will dominate cyberspace

North Idaho College’s athletic department has been geared for many years now to pursue a path of excellence. But with technology changing rapidly everyday, would that ideal hold up if the sports world expanded into a virtual reality setting? Read more »

A soldier trains in a simulator cab at the Combined Arms Tactical Trainer. (Photo: Lockheed Martin)

A huge virtual reality training facility in Sennelager, Germany, which uses the latest 3D gaming technology, is helping British forces, from individuals to entire battle groups, prepare for operations in southern Afghanistan.

Two years ago, PlayStation-style war games helped soldiers of 5th Battalion The Rifles (5 RIFLES) get ready for their tour of Iraq.

Before departing for theatre, troops spent hours in simulators and replica operations rooms at the Sennelager Training Centre in Germany, driving virtual vehicles and commanding computer-generated ground patrols. Read more »

Designs for avionics and synthetic vision rely heavily on human factors research

People interact with machines in different ways – with their eyes, touch, voices, and even their brain waves. These human factors are important when designing cars, home theaters, and especially commercial and military aircraft cockpits. Read more »

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Blu-ray function is disabled, so no, you won’t find Defense Department engineers on the job watching “Avatar” in high def while running classified satellite images through their new supercomputer that harnesses banks of Sony PlayStation video gaming consoles.

Also, the Defense engineers didn’t go to Toys R Us or Sears to buy those 1,760 PlayStations. They worked directly with Sony and one of its distributors.

“It wasn’t something as simple as going to Best Buy or Wal-Mart,” said Mark Barnell, the high-performance computing director at the Air Force Research Lab’s operation in Rome, N.Y.

Barnell answered these as well as more technical questions this morning in a phone interview with The Plain Dealer, which in today’s editions described how Defense Department engineers and scientists developed the biggest, fastest interactive computer the Pentagon has. Read more »

The latest release in the Civilization series has many improvements, from beautiful new graphics to redesigned gameplay. Many features in Civilization IV have been streamlined or eliminated, in favor of a simplified playing experience that will attract new players to the game. Having studied Civilization IV extensively (most of our publications are based upon research in Civilization IV), we will discuss some of Civilization V‘s many changes and the associated trade-offs in terms of player engagement and motivation. Read more »

The Pentagon is looking to better train its troops – by scanning their minds as they play video games. Read more »

IMMERSED IN POSSIBILITIES: Duke City firm thinking beyond military applications for surround-imagery Multifunction Dome technology

It doesn’t take much to imagine the commercial potential for the technology Albuquerque’s Game Production Services developed for a first-of-its-kind training simulator for the U.S. Army.

The company recently announced the completion of the Multifunction Dome, an 18-foot-high, 37-foot-wide platform that employs 84 projectors and ultrasurround sound system to create a 360-degree “immersive environment” for the Army’s Air Defense School at Fort Sill, Okla. Read more »