Budget constraints continue to challenge Department of Defense programs requiring new and innovative approaches to reduce training cost and increase efficiency. Fortunately, the gaming and entertainment industry is providing opportunities for the DoD to capitalize on massive commercial Research & Development investments in technologies that are directly transferable to the development of virtual training products. These technologies are allowing the development of highly detailed interactive environments that can complement training and reduce the number of high cost hardware trainers required, significantly reducing overall program training cost. Commercial off the shelf hardware and software is now readily available which allows rapid development of prototypes that are exportable to numerous platforms to include Personal Computer, mobile, tablet, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality.
Training in the 21st Century
Advanced VizLab
The Advanced Vizlab is staffed by some of the industry’s most talented engineers and artists, and consists of video production equipment and commercial game development tools. The laboratory also houses state-of-the-art mixed-reality devices and facilities that Torch uses to stay on the leading edge of virtual training trends.