The JamieWire: U.S. Defense Training goes Virtual - Forterras' OLIVE™

I am thrilled to see that we finally adopted virtual gaming technology for defense training. As you will read below - I was very involved with this right after 911 when I owned Drake Certivo.

Forterra Systems is a leader in providing online distributed virtual world technology for the corporate, healthcare, government, and entertainment industries. Forterra's software and services let you build virtual worlds to train, plan, rehearse, and collaborate in ways previously considered impossible.

To address government needs - Forterra created a National Security Division that will be based on Orlando, FL. Forterras' new division appointed Dr. Michael Macedonia as VP and general manager. He has held some pretty stealthy roles - Director of the Disruptive Technology Office (DTO) and he was also the former Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO STRI).

Forterras' OLIVE (On-Line Interactive Virtual Environment) platform provides our government and trainers to rapidly generate realistic, collaborative, 3D Internet training solutions that scale. Think about it - his has to be very scalable as they will have thousands of users with intense 3D scenes needed to simulate real world conditions. Very cool stuff!

For those of you who do not know - we do have a training at US NCCT location - it is a replica of Bagdad etc. But it is limited to how many people can you physically train onsite. And it does not address people already deployed. So this new direction is very welcomed.

Forterra's OLIVE Platform allows users to rapidly build realistic scenariosin 3D. Once these worlds are developed – agencies like the defense department can hold training and mission-rehearsal exercises via these virtual worlds- online. This is cool because they can share lessons learned between deployed and pre-deployed units residing in the homeland security arena. This includes multi-national and diverse training globally. In fact – they are also using the OLIVE Platform to provide first-responder training.

For those of you who do not KNOW – When I owned Certivo we actually presented this concept, technology and learning architecture to Homeland Security and the National Center for Combat Training (NCCT). Even though it is 6 years later – I am glad they did deploy this training method making use of gaming technology to address the much needed training for our defense of the United States.

http://www.forterrainc.com