What the US Navy's Undersea Warfare Center Is Doing in SL (Updated)

The last time I tried to visit the Second Life islands owned by the United States Navy's Naval Undersea Warfare Center several months ago, I was blocked from entering most of it. This machinima above shows what they've been doing in Second Life, including rapid prototyping, data modeling, and VoIP-driven conferencing, much of it between other branches of the US military which also maintain a Second Life presence. Leading to a sentence I never thought I'd hear, outside of science fiction: "What you see here is the United States Coalition of Second Life having a weekly meeting. Representatives of the Army, Air Force, and Navy, meet in virtual space to discuss about collaborative issues and common practices in virtual worlds."

The Center ranges over several dozen sims, which seems like an excessively large footprint, especially since the Navy is using it for real world work. As a US taxpayer, I wonder if it'd be more cost effective to shrink the public-facing presence in Second Life to a handful of sims, and conduct the possibly-classified work [See update below] in a much cheaper OpenSimulator grid behind the Pentagon's firewall. In any case, most of Warfare's campus seems open now, and you might enjoy a tour. (Wonder what founding Linden Cory Ondrejka, a former Naval officer and weapons systems engineer, would make of it.) When I just visited, the welcome center was streaming Prince's "Rasberry Beret", an excellent if surreal way to be greeted at the entrance into the virtual foyer of the organization that develops (in the homepage's words) "submarines, autonomous underwater systems, and offensive and defensive weapons systems associated with undersea warfare." [Direct SLurl teleport at this link] Hat tip: Amanda Linden.

Update, 4:18pm: In Comments, the US Navy's Maccus McCullough says their "hardcore classified work is what we have Nebraska [the Lindens' new firewalled version of Second Life], OpenSim and Qwaq for." Why the large landmass? "[W]e simply need the prims. Our Parameter Evaluation Plot to demonstrate immersive sonar training at USS Providence is composed of thousands of prims."

Comments

[Deadpan]

Something tells me there's not a hell of alot of hard-core classified stuff going on.

I'm just guessing.

OTOH, it's simpler to use the SL grid than run a ton of OpenSims and your own asset server.

Damnit, now I have the SeaLab theme stuck in my head.

[Ann Otoole]

By far one of the most outstanding, in depth, and detailed briefings on leveraging the 3D nature of Second Life.

Lucky people getting paid to do cool and critical work using this platform.

[Maccus McCullough]

As an experimental program to explore metaverse technology applied to undersea warfare, we have diverse goals and requirements. To address the blogger's foot print comment, we simply need the prims. Our Parameter Evaluation Plot to demonstrate immersive sonar training at USS Providence is composed of thousands of prims. Additionally, our newest sims will be used for external UUV behavior simulators driving inworld UUV models.

To Mr. Deadpan: the hardcore classified work is what we have Nebraska, OpenSim and Qwaq for.

[Harper Ganesvoort]

I think this is a quite interesting way for the armed forces to get together, meet for conference (one of the plans for the Metaverse in Snow Crash, anyway), and train. What's really interesting is that some of the conference attendees were, shall we say, not dressed in standard military-issue Class A's. I saw a pair of bat or dragon wings in that meeting, for heaven's sake. I didn't thing the Pentagon would be willing to be that loose, even in something as free-form as Second Life.

[rikomatic]

wow, that made a very convincing argument for the value of these 3d immersive shared social spaces for the military. Impressive, and useful for other sectors like education and business.

[Chakalak Skall]

That is interesting! I forwarded the vid to a friend who definately should be interested (as well as his boss).

quote by Harper: " I saw a pair of bat or dragon wings in that meeting, for heaven's sake."

lmao
That was Pathfinder Linden! :D

[Scarlett Stand]

quote by Harper: " I saw a pair of bat or dragon wings in that meeting, for heaven's sake."

Not all participants from the services are military and as civilians we are not required to wear the Class A's.

And yes that was Pathfidner Linden.

[GreenLantern Excelsior]

Maybe I should reenlist so I can practice taking primary coolant samples, adding morpholine to the steam generators, and taking topside swipes when the boat comes back into port.

[Extropia DaSilva]

"Leading to a sentence I never thought I'd hear, outside of science fiction: "What you see here is the United States Coalition of Second Life having a weekly meeting. Representatives of the Army, Air Force, and Navy, meet in virtual space to discuss about collaborative issues and common practices in virtual worlds."'

Not only that, but one participant looked like a Black Mage. So picking a fight with these guys would be particularly unwise;)

[Michael A uuuuhmmm...Smith]

Needs more Bubby content.