Virtual reality is here to stay, and technologies are on the market to help design as realistic an experience as possible, from faithfully presenting three-dimensional perspectives in real-time down to olfactory chemicals and scents that recreate actual smells. Yes, the technology is here, and can be experienced without cumbersome specialized optical-wear or anything other than oneself, as one is.
Take, for example, the Virtual Army Experience, or VAE, created by the United States Army in conjunction with American software developer Zombie Studios. It is a mobile infantry combat simulator, available in a handful of different versions from full-sized to traveling packages suitable for indoor or outdoor installations. In two years and at a cost of almost twenty million dollars, the VAE has been hosted at a variety of sites throughout forty states at venues ranging from NASCAR races to music festivals. The VAE was designed to capitalize on the appetite of today’s American youth for electronic entertainment. Instead of continuing to run television commercials as in the previous century, it was decided to support traditional forms of outreach with one that more immediately and forcefully resonated with today’s young males.
The VAE presents a life-sized networked environment for visitors to get a small taste of soldiering and battle. With a complicated setup that involves computers, video, motion sensors, and full surround sound, the VAE is an engaging way to both entertain and educate, not to mention recruit. Through the use of traditional storytelling alongside familiar videogaming conventions, the VAE has been hailed for its innovative use of cutting-edge technology to inform as well as to sell.
It’s a far ways off from the kind of passive technology more familiar to amusement rides like the Oztrek by serial entrepreneur Zalman Silber. Employing a giant IMAX-like screen with motion seating that is activated in synchronization with onscreen events and actions, this kind of immersive virtual experience is purposefully safe and innocuous – perfectly suitable for the general family-oriented audiences it seeks. By contrast, the VAE is heavily geared towards young males, with an emphasis on shoot-’em-up tasks and gameplay. The full-version starts off in a traditional manner similar to something like the aforementioned Oztrek, with a twenty-minute ride in which video briefings are given by various soldiers of the United States Army explaining their areas of expertise, their specialized duties, as well as their personal goals outside of the military. But the similarity to yesteryear’s virtual tours ends there as participants go on to engage in any number of war-fighting scenarios, from inside life-sized Blackhawk helicopter simulators to equally life-sized Humvee simulators.