NSF Avatar Grant Expected to Revolutionize Virtual Representations

I noted earlier this year the ties director James Cameron made with academia while making the movie “Avatar.” Notably, he hired Jodie Holt, director of the botany and plant sciences department over at UC Riverside to consult with Sigourney Weaver (helping her act like a scientist), and to develop a nomenclature for the fictitious plant life on Pandora. Now another of those academic ties has led to an NSF grant for a prof at Texas A&M.

It’s an interesting Hollywood tidbit … many of the folks behind the onscreen animations in top grossing films graduated from TAMU’s Dept. of Visualization. Texas is a hotbed of movie animation and video game development, with some 55 related companies headquartered here. Many students at A&M’s Dept. of Visualization are snatched up by Hollywood companies and go right to work on future blockbusters.

Tim McLaughlin heads the department, and was hired by Cameron to work on the alien Na’vi race. This in turn led to a grant by the NSF for half a million dollars. Here’s the relevant quote:

The investigation will study motion of virtual animals to better convey traits that express what the creatures are, such as heavy or light, predator or prey, old or young. For instance, the movement of young animals typically is fairly balanced but chaotic, whereas old animals are slower. The goal is to capture those traits and allow users to attach them to the animal.

The study could have implications for online social systems and video games…

On a deeper level, McLaughlin said, it’s a shift away from animation based on robotics principles such as points in space and rotation and toward how animation is perceived by the viewer.

Complete story here.

"Cute Scientist" by TAMU student Megan Bednarz

Online Medical Training in Virtual Hospitals

Pulse at TAMU-CC

Pulse!!, the Virtual Clinical Learning Lab, was created and is hosted at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. It was designed for experiential training of healthcare personnel in a virtual environment, exposing learners to stressful medical situations with no risk to actual patients.

The simulator uses 3D gaming technology for its virtual environment, in which civilian or military medical personnel can receive training. About $15 million has been spent on developing the project, most of it through federal sources such as the Office of Naval Research. Dr. Claudia L. McDonald, Associate VP for Special Projects at TAMU-CC, is the principal investigator.

Other medical training programs using video game technology are either in place or under development, including an effort led by Western Governor’s University funded by the Dept. of Labor; TruSim’s triage game; and Full Spectrum Warrior, developed at USC for treating post-traumatic stress syndrome.

School Bus Driving Simulator Promotes Safety

We’ve looked in the past at the giant ship simulator at Texas A&M – Galveston, where boat pilots entering the Merchant Marine can train virtually on any ship and all the world’s major ports, and the giant flight simulators used by the FAA to train airline pilots and traffic controllers in Oklahoma. Now comes word of a school bus simulator designed to train new drivers in safe driving.

This is no simple video game trainer. The price tag is a reported $200,000 for schools in Prince William County, VA. Here are the key quotes from an article on a local television station’s site:

Users see a dashboard, identical to those in real school buses. The computer then creates a variety of road hazards drivers can see and feel, such as bad weather.

“It allows them – in a laboratory setting – to make mistakes that don’t cost lives, doesn’t damage property and they get an opportunity to learn from that,” said Director of Transportation Ed Bishop, Prince William County schools.

Eventually, all 725 Prince William school bus drivers will train on the simulator; some to specific needs like backing up or making turns, so they are better drivers when they are out on the road with students on board.

School bus simulations are actually old news. eSchoolNews detailed efforts [free subscription required] by North Carolina schools to adopt bus driving simulators designed by the state highway patrol way back in 2001.

References:
North Carolina district tries 3-D driving simulator to improve bus safety. (2001, January 1). eSchoolNews. [Online.] Available: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=32981

P.W. County adopts simulation training for school bus drivers. (2009, September 17). WJLA. [Online.] Retrieved October 13, 2009 from http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0909/660289.html

Rise of the Giant Simulators

Imagine an old style simulation designed to train newly hired air traffic controllers. The students gather in a large room, in the center of which is a model airport made of plywood. Different students grab toy planes and begin “flying” them around the room by holding them out at different heights and walking in circles around the airport. Students take turns playing air traffic contoller, shouting out altitude and speed instructions to the airplanes. Occasionally, a plane is ordered to land at the airport. When mistakes are made, the planes “crash,” and students start over again.

Sounds very 20th Century, doesn’t it? Hold your breath: air traffic contollers are still trained that way in 2008. But, things are starting to change as the technology for giant electronic simulators, essentially videogames played out on room-sized screens, matures.

We last discussed the technology back in November, when looking at the ship simulator used by the Texas Maritime Academy over at Texas A&M – Galveston. All manner of ships can be programmed for students to pilot into the world’s major harbors, using seven 15 foot screens and tilting floors to help provide the full pitching deck experience during virtual storms.

Now, Matthew Wald at The New York Times brings us an article on the giant air traffic control simulators used by the Federal Aviation Administration Academy in Oklahoma City.

The sophisticated video games are meant to address a serious real-world problem: Nearly two-thirds of the agency’s 15,000 air traffic controllers will no longer be working by 2017 when they reach the mandatory retirement age of 56. … As a result, the agency now must hire and train some 1,700 controllers a year for the next decade, a task the Government Accountability Office described as a major challenge. Experts say that having a high proportion of trainees and rookies in towers and radar rooms may reduce safety. To meet the challenges, the agency is turning to electronic tower simulators, which one instructor described as “a big Xbox.”

Wald reports administrators hope to shave 20-60% training time using the big video games. Six simulators run 18 hours/day training students, though Wald states the old style simulations are still used. When virtual planes crash, though, the resulting fireball lighting up the monitors makes a much more visceral visual impact.

The article concludes with an interesting summation of the videogames used to screen candidates. The games gauge how well a candidate can multitask and deal with distractions. A battery of tests are used, too, requiring mental math computation. Remember those word problems in grade school requiring you to compute the rates and times of two different cars, trains, or airplanes leaving different cities? Well, you get the picture. Finally, students “are also given a hyperactive version of Pac-Man to play in their spare time. The idea is to keep students’ skills sharp, instructors say, and hone their ability to watch several targets at a time.”

References:
Wald, M. L. (2008, October 7). For air traffic trainees, games with a serious purpose. The New York Times. [Online.] Retrieved: October 16, 2008 from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/us/08controller.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&sq=serious%20game&st=cse&scp=1

The Art of Marriage Proposals Through Gaming

We Aggies know a thing or two about proposing to our beloved, especially if she is an Aggie too. (Alas, my wife is from Louisiana, where everybody professes loyalty to LSU, whether they attended that fine school or not.) There is one tree on the A&M campus in particular, the Century Tree, that has a tradition of serving as a pop-the-question spot for thousands of couples. Here’s a YouTube video of one such marriage proposal. (If a woman is lucky enough to be or snag a member of the Corps of Cadets, as in this video, she gets quite a bit of extra pomp and ceremony throughout the entire wedding process than the average Aggie these days. The Corps has dwindled from comprising the entire student body back in the day to a couple thousand or so students now.)

There have been many other creative proposals at TAMU over the years (probably mostly by guys who weren’t in the Corps (see parenthetical above)). During my graduation ceremony, for instance, an Aggie awaited his beloved to descend from the podium, her diploma in hand, before going down on one knee. The MC had been briefed ahead of time and paused in calling out names to wish them well, and everybody in the coliseum whooped and hollered for the couple.

Another story that comes to mind dates back to when a thriving hot air balloon business existed in College Station, and Kyle Field was left unlocked and accessible most of the time. The fellow had friends buy hundreds of paper plates, and had them spell out the Marry me? question on the bleachers so she could read it as they floated over in the balloon.

So, Aggies know a thing or two about proposing to their sweethearts. But there are lots of neat stories about guys finding creative ways to pop the question. I recall one fellow hiding the ring in a box of Cracker Jacks and setting up a picnic for his girlfriend on a cliff overlooking the ocean. After the couple finished off the meal, for desert he handed over the box, and waited nervously for her to open the “toy surprise.” She reared back her arm to toss the packet over the cliff, willing to carelessly toss away what was usually a cheap trinket. He went ballistic, grabbing her arm and yelling, “Wait!” She opened it, and was surprised, but it was a close call and he almost lost an expensive diamond engagement ring.

Guys dating women who like games seem to consistently hit upon the idea of sneaking marriage proposals into the game. Several men over the years have popped the question through crossword puzzles, convincing complicit editors to run rigged games. Here’s one example.

But finally, we have a real gaming geek story. This fellow re-programmed his girlfriend’s game so a ring and wedding cake appeared upon reaching a certain score. Bernie Peng ported over a copy of Bejeweled to the Nintendo DS, and gave it as a present to his girlfriend. There is no official version of Bejeweled for the DS, you see, so this was something special for her. Ordinarily such shenanigans might be frowned upon by corporate, but PopCap Games (owner of Bejeweled and other popular casual titles) turned it into a publicity event.

There have been marriages in virtual worlds, notably in Second Life and World of Warcraft. Somehow, cheating in marriage garners more publicity. But electronic marriage is old news, since any enhancement to communication leads inevitably to more social interaction. The book, The Victorian Internet, detailed a legal marriage performed at a distance via telegraph and Morse Code. But as video games continue to gain a stronghold in the public psyche, look for more social interactions like marriage, and social research, online.

Sailing the Virtual Seas at TAMU-Galveston

A nice article came out this week from Rhiannon Meyers over at the Galveston County Daily News about the ship simulator at Texas A&M – Galveston. Students in the Texas Maritime Academy at TAMU-Galveston must put in 40 hours on the simulator before taking control of real ships.

The academy, opened in 1962, is the only one of its kind in Texas, and one of six in the United States. Between history, English, math and science courses, cadets take simulated cruises to international ports.

Nestled inside building 2002 on A&M’s campus, the simulator, with its 225-degree view on seven 15-foot screens, offers a peek into the bridge of a ship. There’s a wheel, radar, radio, a panoramic view into a virtual reality seascape and the sound of waves slapping the side of a craft.

The imitation of the ship’s motion is so realistic that some get seasick, said Karen Bigley, director of media relations and communications.

The simulator can be programmed to run as a 60 foot cruiser on up to a gargantuan 900 foot supertanker. Students can practice bringing in the ship to major ports around the world. When port conditions change, the software can be quickly updated to reflect the real world changes, so when students actually sail after graduating it should look pretty close to their practice runs.

Also, weather and rough sea conditions can be simulated, making the tasks much more daunting and giving valuable experience. A cadet Meyers watched practicing bumped into another boat and plowed over a man overboard. “Capt. Robert Thrailkill shrugged. Better to clip another ship and injure a drowning man in a college classroom than on the open seas, he said.”

The Full Mission Bridge simulator originally cost half a million dollars. It provides a crucial tool in training maritime personnel.

References:
Meyers, R. (2007, November 14). Students brave the simulated seas. Galveston County Daily News. [Online]. Available: http://news.galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?
ewcd=9751907adb742ca7