Image via Massively by way of NATO
Insiders indicate that NATO has awarded development of its ‘virtual campus’ to Florida-based company Engineering & Computer Simulations. The company specializes in military simulations built on the government off-the-shelf (GOTS) software US Nexus. The winning bid, at $100,000 USD, will see the development of two scenarios: one, a replica of key buildings at the NATO command in Norfolk, Virginia, and the second a representation of Afghanistan.
The bid ends weeks of speculation over whether NATO was serious about including Second Life as one of the three platforms of choice, the other being Forterra. However, NATO made clear in their responses to vendor questions that Second Life was definitely on the list.
One can only hypothesize as to whether NATO went with a low-bid option as specified by the RFP, or whether “value” considerations came into play. If the latter, then the move is a feather in the cap for the GOTS approach to virtual world development: virtual world software developed and licensed for use by government agencies.
I can’t help thinking that Second Life had a few things running against it, chief among them the licensing restrictions of the platform, the inability to import mesh objects from external 3D modeling programs, and clumsy ways of integrating external desktop programs like PowerPoint or Acrobat Reader. With Nexus, NATO will be able to draw on a robust database of third-party 3D libraries, pre-built “military avatars”, and will be able to easily replicate real world buildings using standard architectural modeling tools. While Second Life has a deep database of content (terrabytes of it), it would be interesting to parse whether replicating real locations is easier in 3D applications than using prims, with far more portability, data back-up, and integration with other systems due to server-side code access.
Finally, the NATO RFP requested ‘advanced technical characteristics’ that included bots and artificial intelligence, avatars customized based on real life photos, and other features which are not easily executed in SL at the server level. NATO’s decision to exclude OpenSim as a platform option adds one final lesson to their bid process: some organizations are clearly judging that it is not yet “ready for prime time”.
I read the RFP. The full scope is an absolutely massive undertaking for any company. $100k will buy NATO a handful of custom environments. However, I am sure that to enable the use of these environments in production, additional license fees etc, will be required. Certainly as the full extent of the RFP is developed, the bill to NATO will easily end up well into 7 figures. Its entirely possible that NATO fully understands this, but in my experience vendors quite often send low ball bids with vague details. The client quite often ends up shocked by the final price. However since I am sure that ECS would not take this approach, and because NATO is comprised of some sharp folks, I would not expect and negative suprises during the scope of this engagement
Having participated in some of the betas of upstart virtual worlds (still under NDA), I have to say that there is something liberating about the new crop’s technical chops:
* vast areas with no “sim crossings”
* excellent physics models without “stutter-stop movement”
* massively higher avatar scalability without lag
Second Life is awesome at what it does (a user created virtual space) and I love the artistic groups in world. It is a great “hang out” too.
When you start to look at getting “industrial” users engaged it is hard to take seriously. The same properties that make it powerful for user generated content are the Achilles heal when trying to service the Serious Games crowd.
Yeah, it can work for business meetings (and the VNC media plug in took away one of my biggest gripes about SL for business), but I just can’t seriously imagine relying on it for realism in training.
“Captain, we have the enemy on the run, but half the troops just lagged out on a sim crossing!” isn’t want they are looking for.
i havent read the actual RFP. but looking at the developer chosen, and the rough facts, this NATO project appears to be a closed project akin to a intranet. The ONLY advantage the SL platform offers is 50k early adopter 24-55 year olds who continue to play:). Its clear how and why the contract was given when one looks at the specs of the projects desires.
It would appear that these 3d simulations type projects for these type of clients are given out, and mananged the same as they always have even before SL became known by more than a few in 2006.
At the rate i see, open sims is a decade away if ever from becoming a platform for these type of clients/projects. If they are lucky and someone is “allowed” to market/manage the open sims tech in a professional buisness way, the tech will be at best, the FLASH media redux, for the media based commercial world and a 5 year repeat of the FLASH phase of the web, 1998-2003. A repeated creative demand for 3d immersive squares of land.:)
not unlike SL 2006-7. Just larger in scope with more design businesses getting into it, since the restrictions of a singular company- LL- may be removed.
[...] NATO Awards Virtual World Development Project to Nexus – Dusan Writer’s Metaverse [...]
When I was in basic (granted a few hundred years back) we used to have a range simulator than ran off a C-64. Those amazing systems you see on TV are for Apache pilots, not the average 11B Infantryman. We were excited when the Zenith Z-286 machines arrived to run our FO sim software in the magic and 4 or so colors of CGA.
Not sure what the commenter refers to by “realism” in training, but anything that gets your mind going over the steps enforces the motto we fight as we train since you cannot pick a smaller country to practice on like Iceland.
When it comes down to the moment you don’t go with your fears and doubt. You do it step by step as taught.
I would not be shocked if these guys get their own little slice of the second life free of the traumas we have like that weird walking stutter my poor little guy has developed as of late.
I would rather have some time in a sim than dropped into the real with nada.
I reviewed the RFP, and submitted the questions toward the end of the deadline that pointed out Second Life’s inability to meet some of the original technical performance requirements: single port through firewall capability, vendor required hosting, SSL. I also pointed out to my team that a large majority of these technical requirements were taken directly from OLIVE’s own website, almost forcing the hand of NATO to either remove SL as a viable solution, or adjust their requirements. This work let to the final Q&A answers that cleared up SL’s ability to offer a competitive solution. Yet, we see who still won the contract.
While ACT has a sim within SL, it was not suitable for this RFP for many reasons including originally not meeting the RFP’s technical requirements. SL in general fell short on many other aspects compared to OLIVE and Nexus solutions including native support of MS Office documents and competitive HTML support in-world (in addition to some of the other advantages of Nexus represented above in earlier comments).
Second Life, in the real world, still has many obstacles to overcome if it wants to be USED as a successful platform for immersive meetings/training. A majority of the real life companies using Second Life still make use of the word “experiment” when referring to their sims while other organizations leave this word out when they’ve chosen OLIVE or Nexus. Unfortunate, but true for Linden Labs if this is a strategic direction and competitive landscape they see in their future.
[...] Dusan Writer’s Metaverse » NATO Awards Virtual World Development Project to Nexus – Virtual worlds and creativity, business, collaboration, and identity. [...]
Coyle,
You hit all the relevant points on the head. Well I have been personally in the middle of another competition between Second Life and Nexus, which is ongoing. I look forward to see what will be provided for Nato’s 100 000k. If it is just the static building and ‘representation’ of Afghanistan (like a 3D map?? with data overlay??) who knows… then perhaps that could work.
The main problem that SL faces is the ‘port’ constraint that was required, and turns out that even Nexus does not really meet all NATO’s requirements…even though Nebraska can meet most of the security requirements, SL did not win
. In any case, many federal institutions are watching, some are even hiring ‘consultants’ to make sense of all the virtual world solutions out there. I have tried the best to collaborate with LL through SL government. I hope LL will speed up the innovations that is supposed to come out this year, I have seen the media plugin and such but when is HTML on a prim going to happen? what is going on with the new radically improved UI for the next generation client, we have been excluded to provide input because we were told it is best for ‘us Linden UI experts to work in peace’? Currently, I have supported the SL platform with all my might and for good reason, I believe seriously that inworld building/sharing is the best way to achieve rapid productions/modifications and cost reductions but the promised web integration need to happen. A lot of people currently have their careers tied to this platform and if we see the uninformed clients move to lesser platforms such as Nexus, we will move, we have to survive especially if nothing happens this quarter. Anyway, hope LL is listening.
Moriz Gupte in SL
[...] in contracting with government can’t be discounted. However, wins by Icarus Studios and momentum (though not necessarily development funding) for Nexus, Forterra’s lock on the government [...]