What is There?
San Francisco Chronicle
Simulation technology turning into Army training tool
Benny Evangelista: April 20, 2003
The employees at There Inc. have spent five years creating a virtual world where people can hang out, play games and chat online. But events in the real world have created an unexpected new goal for the Menlo Park firm: anti- terrorist training.
The U.S. Army has signed There to a $3.5 million contract to adapt its technology for an advanced computer simulation program.
Unlike most other "sims," which come with scripted scenarios and preprogrammed enemies, this one will have a more flexible design that allows people to play the various roles, be it soldier, terrorist or bystander. The Army hopes this feature will make the simulation much more unpredictable and therefore more realistic.
Chief Executive Officer Tom Melcher said the potential for government uses of his company's technology were not on his radar until Defense Department officials approached There last May. "When we started this company, this was not in the business plan," Melcher said. "This was not something we were actively pursuing at all."
As part of a four-year development plan, There Simulations Inc., a subsidiary of the company, is working on a Kuwait scenario, a virtual world that can be used to train personnel to anticipate and defend against an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City.
There allows participation by more people than other simulation and multiplayer games developed by the military or commercial world, said James Grosse, principal investigator for the U.S. Army's Simulation Technology Center in Orlando.
The program is also flexible enough to incorporate new weapons or new locales like San Francisco.
The technology also represents a revolutionary change in the way the Army has trained for battle, which has traditionally relied on live or simulated war games that were limited to known enemy forces with predictable weapons, strategies, strengths and weaknesses.
The ability of participants to think out of the box introduces the unpredictable human element that has become a critical part of training in a post-Sept. 11 world, Grosse said.
After years of being in stealth mode, There Inc.'s consumer product, an online community in which members are represented by on-screen avatars, went live with a public beta version in January, accessible to selected members. The company hopes to open the service to the general public in the fall.
There, members can chat by text using a cartoon balloon above their avatars or by voice if they have a high-speed Internet connection. Participants can also race hover boards, engage in trivia contests or meet new friends in a virtual bar.
So far, however, There's biggest customer has been the government.
Last May, representatives from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, or DARPA, discovered There and saw the potential for homeland defense and military training.
"We were pretty wowed by it," Grosse said.
It's still unclear how the program will be used, he said. It could be used by students at military universities like West Point, by soldiers out in the field or by intelligence agents, he said. Officials have also discussed using civilian college students -- already versed in online games -- to play roles such as terrorists.
Jack Thorpe, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who 20 years ago began creating the Pentagon's network of training simulators called Simnet, said video-directed drone planes controlled from a remote location are an example of how the military has already merged the real and virtual worlds.
There's technology "is a pretty important development," Thorpe said. "I don't see it as a game. I see it as a communication system that's going to allow us to think about our relationships differently."
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