Simulation as the Preferred Form of Communication

[Cross-posted from ModelBlog]
Anthony Townsend at the Institute for the Future believes that "simulation will be an innate vocabulary for tomorrow's consumer, worker, soldier, and educator. They will see the world and describe it in terms of simulations in the same way that my parents used written essays and I use PowerPoint. It may well become their preferred mode of visualizing and interacting with data."

To make this possible the simulation and gaming community have to create simulation construction tools that are as readily accessible as PowerPoint is today. It has to have a similar ease of use, ubiquity of access, and accessible price point.

These tools also require/drive a data standard, which could be community generated as was XML, or commercially generated as is the MS Office Document format.

Sun's Chief Gaming Officer - Chris Melissinos

The military needs a mechanism to deliver training applications to any desktop client at any facility in the world. Accomplishing this by installing the right training app on the right computer is totally impractical, and practically impossible. This has to be a pull system that allows the trainee to open or install the necessary applications on the computer that he is sitting at. Web pages are a great model for this, though training applications are more like 3D games is their size and complexity.

Java games delivered via Web Start is one solution to this. It allows the application to be larger and more complex than a typical web page or Flash application. But it also avoids requiring the user to install applications from CD-ROM.

Of course Chris Melissinos, the Chief Gaming Officer for Sun Microsystems, thinks this is a great solution because it uses Sun's Java environment as its foundation. After playing with a number of Java games for entertainment, I tend to agree with him for medium-sized applications (i.e. 1MB to 10MB).

One entertaining example is Tribal Trouble.

Discussion with Greg Papadopoulos

During the Game Developers Conference, I had a great meeting with Greg Papadopoulos, the CTO of Sun Microsystems. We were able to explore a number of ideas for computing to support ubiquitous training applications for the military. Specifically,

• Servers - What kind of back-end servers/services do you need to provide a source from which to deliver training applications?
  
• Learning Metrics - How do you measure the impact that the training applications are having on the soldiers who are going through it?
  
• Identity Management - How do you verify the identity of the person who is being trained somewhere in the world?
  
• Long-haul Networking - What are the conduits that can deliver instantaneous training applications to soldiers?
  
• Training Client - What software technology can effectively carry training to 500,000 people spread all over the globe?