Is the Digital World Flat?

Although it was demonstrated many years ago that the real world is not flat, there are there are those that think the virtual world is flat, most notably up north at USC’s Institute of Creative Technologies. A five year $100 million dollar grant from the Dept. of Defense has funded the FlatWorld project, which is an immersive virtual reality environment designed to help train soldiers. When digital flats, or large-rear projection screens, are used along with physical props, FlatWorld becomes a “mixed reality” environment where users interact with both the physical and virtual worlds seamlessly.

Users can walk and run freely among simulated rooms, buildings, and streets. It differs from other immersive simulations because large-scale digital displays combined with full-size equipment and objects (e.g., tables, window frames, doors), and amazingly enough, it is modular and transportable.

Regardless of one’s political affiliation, most people (including the party in power) have come to the conclusion that the federal response to the recent hurricanes was lacking and in need of improvement. This makes me think that a really good use for an powerful immersive simulation environment like FlatWorld would be to train emergency responders.

Through this sort of environment, train derailments, plane crashes, fires, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, etc. could be simulated. If the technology was adaptive and used some sort of conditional branching, perhaps it could show responders in training the results of their actions, in an “if/then” manner. So if a responder reacts this way then X will occur, if the responder reacts differently then A, Y, or Z might occur. I would think disaster training simulations once developed in a system like FlatWorld could provide a healthy ROI for the government as the system is portable, allowing it to be used most anywhere. Most of all, a disaster training simulation if developed, could improve the federal response to disasters and save lives.