What's Your Avatar Look Like?
Social-oriented virtual environments “are driven by the compelling story, by how people interact,” notes Chris Pogue, president of CAE Professional Services. What needs to be added to the “interaction layer” of avatars and voice-over-IP audio is what Pogue calls the “process choreography” to enable collaborative decision-making. This includes the type of rigorous, physics-based modeling of advanced simulation environments as well as basic business processes such as document sharing.
To read the entire magazine feature, click here.
United 93
Ninety-three minutes of tension. Heart-tightening, nail-gnawing, seat-squirming from the opening scenes because, unlike most movies, these were real people and you know how it’s going to end. Profoundly saddening, especially as you intrude on tearful good-bye phone calls with unsuspecting loved ones. Sobering to realize the damage inflicted by evil fanaticism in ripping asunder the families of innocents and piercing the psyche of a complacent nation.
To read the entire review, click here.
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Text: CAE-Link expertise in control systems, human-machine interface, and total training is providing next-generation solutions for process operations safety and productivity.
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Total Training Systems for Hydrocarbon Processing
Effective training translates to smoother start-ups, fewer shutdowns, reduced consequences from upsets, lower maintenance costs, consistent product quality, elimination of on-line training tasks, and lessened impact from health and safety issues.
To read the full collateral text, click here.
Pilot's-Eye View
Call it the Ürümqi factor. (That’s pronounced ur-a-moo-chi). Ürümqi is the most inland city in the world, capital of China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, not far from Mongolia on the ancient Silk Road.
In the context of civil aviation, Ürümqi is certainly off the beaten path. And that’s just the point. Not many training operators are going to be terribly interested in an expensive, detailed, high-resolution database of the Ürümqi Diwopu International Airport (URC). But with two million people in the city, airlines fly there from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and dozens of other domestic connections.
The good news for pilots who must fly to URC is that a couple of new database approaches can, literally, put Ürümqi on the map.
To read the entire magazine feature, click here.
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"What a fabulous story in the IITSEC issue of MS&T. Your lead alone captured the essence of what Battle Stations 21 is about."
Margaret Ahrweiler
James McHugh Construction
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Save The Ship
When you are 18 years old, traversing hostile waters, and your ship takes a missile hit for the first time, you’d better have a pretty good idea how you’re going to deal with the debris, the fire and smoke, the cacophony of barked orders and unusual noises, the injured and dying shipmates, and a chaos you’ve never experienced nor could even imagine.
To read the entire magazine feature, click here.
Jedediah Strong Smith
Packing a lifetime of pioneering achievement into a nine-year odyssey (1823-31), he opened the historic gateway to the Far West (South Pass); was the first reported white man to journey overland to California; the first to cross the treacherous Sierra Nevada range from the west; the first to travel across the arid Great Basin, north and south as well as east and west; and the first to negotiate the California coast north to Oregon.
A trapper by trade, his 668 beaver pelts taken in the 1824-25 season may be the record for a single mountaineer. Venturing boldly into an area that was terra incognita, he came to know the West better than any other man alive. Historian Stephen Smith ranks Smith "beside Lewis and Clark," and biographer Dale Morgan labels him "an authentic American hero."
To read the full profile of "Old Jed," click here.
The CG Factors
Latency takes three separate paths - motion system, visual system, and instrument panel simulation or stimulation. When the pilot moves the yoke or stick, as the case may be, the signal is sent to the simulator's aerodynamic model for position, velocity, and acceleration changes. Every subsystem the signal passes through for processing adds to the latency. But the motion/visual synchronization gets the most attention.
"The motion system is pretty fast, very high frequency, about 5 to 10 milliseconds" (less than a single frame in a 60 Hz visual refresh), [Opinicus president Jim] Takats says. "The visual is always the long pole in the tent." The control inputs must be routed through the IG and its graphics processors, where one of the tradeoffs is how much content the user wants to see in the scene. "Do you want to see blades of grass moving in the wash from propellers? A lot of building detail? It takes more processing power. Add scene content, add latency."
To read the entire magazine feature, click here.
Sensor and Sens-ibilities
If an object emits light, heat, a chemical signature, odor, sound, or some other form of energy, it can probably be detected by a military visual or sensor system. And if it can be detected in the real world, it needs to be replicated in the synthetic training environment.
Two recent announcements, made within days of each other on opposite sides of the Atlantic, seem the stuff of science fiction, yet could be precursors to what we might expect in military sensor and training technologies in the next few years.
To read the entire magazine feature, click here.
Care Under Fire
“No one has yet built a high-fidelity virtual environment for healthcare. We want to be 100 percent accurate in representing the pathological and physiological elements.” The computer model, for example, will be “bio-fidelic” – faithfully replicating a human body presenting symptoms and responding to treatment in real time, according to the Pulse!! team. Development of the 3D models even involved videotaping and motion capture of medical staff re-enacting patient cases and rendering of subtle facial expressions to reflect pain or anxiety.
The initial setting will represent the Intensive Care Unit at Bethesda Naval Hospital. One scenario that students might deal with is diagnosing an anthrax victim, which can be tricky, Johnston notes, because “when anthrax patients first present, their symptoms are often confused with the flu.” Another scenario will call for treating a 24-year-old soldier (whom the team has named “Sam”) with a severe abdominal wound and in shock from an IED explosion. “He was treated at the scene and tentatively sterilized, but sometimes not exactly perfect. The students must evaluate this kid, perform tests, make a diagnosis …”
To read the entire magazine feature, click here.
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The Putt.
A jubliant Justin Leonard exults after sinking the 45-foot putt that clinched the Americans' Ryder Cup improbable comeback triumph in 1999.
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Defining Moments
Justin Leonard's career-defining moment to date is “The Putt.” Forty-five feet from the lower tier to the top on the storied 17th green at The Country Club in Brookline where Francis Ouimet surprised British legends Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in 1913. “The shot heard ‘round the world.” Arms and putter to the sky Sports Illustrated cover photo. The clinching blow – once the explosive and controversial team and fan celebration was idled long enough for Jose Maria Olazabel to miss his 25-footer which could have tied the hole and prolonged the outcome to an even more frenzied 18th.
To read the entire Scratch Golfer Magazine feature, click here.
Home, Sweet Homeland
The simulation will be used, in part, to train all first responders for the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games in 2010. But as deputy chief constable Steve Sweeney of the Vancouver police says, “That’s only two weeks. I also have to be prepared for emergency situations the rest of the year.” Other exercises may focus on major events such as a Formula 1 auto race or a meeting of national leaders. “Events that draw attention and resources,” Pogue adds. “They’re building something that will have long-term sustainability.”
To read the entire magazine feature, click here.
Six Steps to Promoting and Generating Loans
Want to generate loans? The last step you take should be to lower interest rates. Instead of cutting your rates (and cutting your income), consider these marketing options first.
A sweepstakes or contest, via the prize (a dream trip, a bundle of cash …) focuses attention on one thing – the essence of good marketing – though at the same time enables you to promote several different loan types. Added stimulus can be an “early bird bonus” for loans made during the first few days or weeks of the promotions.
To read the entire magazine feature, click here.
Left of Boom
They call them "improvised" explosive devices, and the impression that's left by the almost casual television reports of roadside bombs is that these deadly packages are cobbled together by amateurish average Iraqi citizens in a dark corner of their hovel, comprised of paint thinner and street litter and held together with baling wire -- a sort of modern day Molotov cocktail -- then hastily buried in a shallow dirt pit to await a passing convoy of coalition vehicles.
"That is not what we are dealing with," stated Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, recently retired as commander of the US First Army. "They are more like 'precision' explosive devices. They are precisely placed, precisely timed, and precisely designed to cause casualties. The enemy may not use Space Age technology, but make no mistake, he knows what he is doing."
To read the entire magazine feature, click here.
