We’d love for you to attend (with no obligation to stick around for the duration if you don’t want to) so that you can get see how effective the software is at creating immersive virtual training scenarios that can be published on Android or iOS mobile devices.

Of course, that’s not all we’ll be showing off!

Join us for a 60 minute online webinar that will demonstrate how to use VBSWorlds to create and deploy Immersive Virtual Training Simulations. The webinar will run through three real case studies from NATO, US Army and UK MOD to illustrate rapid development of Immersive Training:

• Importing and setting up 3D scenes
• Creating learning interactions
• Develop visual scene flow to implement your scenario
• Publishing to PC, web, SCORM, IOS and Android

The webinar content would be best suited to Instructional Designers, Trainers, Media Developers and Developers but would be good for anyone wanting more background information on VBSWorlds.

Remember! The webinar is FREE and places are limited.

Reserve your seat now by clicking on this link.

It’d be a great opportunity to get some of those questions off your chest and see VBSWorlds on some live projects.

A portion of the serious game commissioned by NATO and designed to improve the effectiveness of personnel during Maritime Interdiction Operations is now available to download for free from Google’s Play Marketplace.

The game, originally conceptualised by Engineering & Computer Simulations (ECS) and subsequently redeveloped for mobile devices by their partners, Caspian Learning, is one of the first of its kind to achieve such [potential] widescale and accessible distribution.

Google’s Play Marketplace, formerly known as the Android Marketplace, is host to the game where it can be downloaded simply by searching for ‘Boarders Ahoy’ in the ‘Apps’ section of Play on any Android mobile or tablet device.

The finished serious game has also been previously deployed to standalone PCs and the Web, but the new mobile version of the game marks NATO’s continuing commitment to remain on the cutting edge of technology developments whilst showcasing best practices to its member countries.

Lee Rushworth, a spokesman for Caspian Learning said, “Developing such an effective virtual training scenario and then allowing users to download it from the web to their personal mobile devices or tablets is a great breakthrough for training. It’s about time we made more use of truly effective distance learning”

A full case study of the Boarder’s Ahoy simulation for NATO is available to read on the Caspian Learning website.

During that time, we have worked with a wide range of clients from all kinds of industries.

Our virtual training simulations and serious games have helped clients train all manner of engaging course; from financial modelling to customer services to logisitcs to military policies and procedures as well as many others.

We are Europe’s Leading provider of immersive simulations for training and we have a long list of awards to back up this claim.

We have both the history and track record to support our position as one of the world’s foremost virtual, immersive training providers.

Case Studies

Military Training
A military training simulation for NATO Maritime Interdiction Operations

Read Now

Safety Certification
A gas safety simulation that allows users to take a certification exam in the game

Read Now

Safety Training
A training simulation that teaches staff how to safely use mechanical hoist machinery

Read Now

Financial Awareness
Become manager of a band to take them from obscurity to the world stage!

Logistics & Supply
Can you keep your customers happy – no matter where they are in the world?

Read Now

The latest version of the software is based on technology grounded in cognitive behaviour study, and is designed to ensure that actual learning and behaviour change takes place within training simulations. This is achieved by allowing developers to create highly immersive 3D training scenarios or ‘serious games’ to improve learner engagement, immersion and interactivity.

VBSWorlds is part of the Bohemia Interactive Simulations suite of products, which includes the formidable VBS2, and is compatible with existing VBS2 art objects. Virtual training scenarios created with VBSWorlds can be linked in to any SCORM compliant learning management system to support real-time performance feedback and tracking.

Lee Rushworth, a spokesman for Caspian Learning said that “VBSWorlds is one of the few mobile training applications that has been completely designed from the very beginning to support and encourage actual behaviour change. We’re extremely proud that scenarios created with VBSWorlds can contain all the information found in PowerPoint slides, pageturners and traditional elearning, whilst making their contents infinitely more engaging and effective.”

VBSWorlds was launched today and a free trial version is available to download from the VBSWorlds website.

Caspian Learning will be at GameTech 2012 in Orlando, Florida this week on the Bohemia Interactive Simulations stand as a partner and would welcome the opportunity to speak to anyone about VBSWorlds.

Download .exe file (260mb)

Download .zip file (260mb)

Licence Agreements

Instructions

Click on either link above to download the VBSWorlds Software. Once downloaded, extract (if you chose the zip file) and run the program.

We’re just days away from releasing VBSWorlds with Android functionality.

As I told you last week, the new version of VBSWorlds fixes some bugs, adds a few minor tweaks and includes the huge Publish to Android functionality.

As well as these major technology changes, we’ve also removed barriers to purchase by removing the requirement for a minimum order of 3 licences.

Now you can buy single-user licences to VBSWorlds.

For more information about the new pricing, visit this page.

If you have any additional questions about the launch of VBSWorlds Android, then please feel free to contact us at info @ vbsworlds.com

I hope so, because there’s something special going to be happening.

On Thursday 29th March, we’ll be presenting an interactive training session on VBSWorlds in room T4-7.

At the end of the session, we’ll be giving away the FIRST copies of VBSWorlds v1.2, which includes the ability to publish training onto Android devices.

That’s right, at the end of that session you could have your hands on a free trial version of VBSWorlds with Android.

We’ll be giving away USB sticks pre-loaded with the software so if the training doesn’t do it for you, maybe the free USB stick will!

The new trial version of the software will be a fully functional version of the software that will allow you to create powerful virtual training scenarios.

If you want to let us know that you’ll be attending, please drop me an email now at lee.rushworth@caspianlearning.co.uk.

Come and claim your free trial version of VBSWorlds on Thursday 29th March, room T4-7 at 15.15 whilst getting free training on how to use it too!

Session in More Detail:

A hands on VBSworlds tutorial at GameTech.

Come and find out how to turn PowerPoint, PDF’s and PageTurners into immersive training simulations that will challenge, engage and improve your learners.

Our CEO Chris Brannigan will demonstrate how to easily author immersive training simulations while walking through real life case studies from military and corporate training.

Attendees will also receive the first free evaluation copies of VBSWorlds with Android publishing capabilities to take away.

Want to make sure you are involved? Send us an email at info@vbsworlds.com requesting your participation and we’ll make sure you’re there.

• Maintenance Training
• Cultural Awareness
• Tactics Techniques and Procedures (TTP’s)
• Familiarisation with new environments
• Lessons Learned Scenarios
• Mission Preparation

With UK MoD targets to transform 50% of training to synthetic environments by 2020, what solutions are available?

VBS2 has traditionally been the premier mission rehearsal simulation platform across the military in cases where there is a requirement for complex Artificial Intelligence, multi player environment, high fidelity immersive 3D platform and realistic physics for shooting and ballistics.

However, for the majority of training in the areas outlined above, the principal requirement is for rapid authoring, development and publishing of training applications at the point of need…

David Wortley, Founder and CEO of Immersive Technology Strategies outlines some solutions in his recent article published in February’s Edition of Defence Global.

Licences to VBSWorlds are developer licences and allow unlimited runtime of any serious games or virtual training simulations created with it.

Please refer to our licensing agreements for more information.

Cost of VBSWorlds:

• 1 Developer Licence: $2500

 Contact Us For More Information

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The problem, however, is that the training infrastructure has remained the same and a growing proportion of the learning cohort are becoming more and more disengaged by the existing materials.

The Problem

The NATO Maritime Interdiction Operations Training Center (NMIOTIC) mission is to conduct the combined training necessary for NATO forces to better execute surface, sub-surface, aerial surveillance, and special operations activities in support of Maritime Interdiction Operations (MIO).

The Center provides theoretical and practical training to NATO personnel and non-NATO partners within an MIO context. Specifically, the Center:

1. Improves allied naval units’ expertise in Maritime Interdiction Operations through specific theoretical and practical training programs
2. Promotes skills, interoperability and co-operation among naval units through sea training and simulation

In the last several years, the center has seen its student population grow significantly – with only 60 students in 2007 and well over 1,200 students in 2010 – while the infrastructure of the center has stayed the same.

This explosion in student population is largely due to the two ongoing naval operations involving NATO forces – Active Endeavor in the Mediterranean and Ocean Shield, the anti-piracy operation.

NMIOTC has identified the growing levels of disengagement throughout the cohort and are hoping to solve this by using a more engaging program of distributed learning as part of their curriculum.

The primary goal is to find a way to transform existing materials into more engaging and more effective individual training that will be robust enough to handle the existing student population and scalable enough to accommodate the likely future growth in student numbers.

Of course, given current economic situations, the solution must also be cost-conscious.

Unlocking Latent Capability

Although a clear requirement existed for new distributed learning to cope with the increase in student numbers, there was still a large library of existing learning material that had been well-written and researched.

As well as improving the scalability of existing material, a secondary project goal was to find a way to integrate all of the latent capability of existing learning into new, more innovative forms of individual distributed learning.

were several options available to NMIOTIC to achieve this but the method they preferred (that was supported by the largest proportion of the learning cohort) was to introduce virtual training ‘games’ or ‘serious games’, similar to those used in home computer console systems.

The ‘game’ was to be called ‘Boarder’s Ahoy’.

Transformational Training

Given the requirement to bring the training capabilities up to a higher and more scalable standard, NATO needed to commission the services of an expert serious games design company who already had experience with similar projects.

After the submission of a competitive RF process, a consortium made up of UK-based Caspian Learning, ECS and Bohemia Interactive Simulations, was selected to deliver the project.

Caspian Learning, ECS and Bohemia Interactive Simulations had already worked with defense organisations in both the UK and the US individually. Both Caspian Learning and ECS had previously won awards for ‘best simulations’ in category in recent years.

Together, the consortia had some of the world’s leading skills and experience required to deliver high-impact virtual training, immersive simulations and serious games.

For the NMIOTIC’s ‘Boarders Ahoy’ project, a solution was required that would allow the subject matter experts to transform their existing training content into a more suitable form.

It was a requirement that the eventual solution should allow greater control over the creation of more learning content, reuse existing training materials and be distributable to a wide range of users, no matter where they were located in the world.

This distribution provision included distributing to web and mobile devices – including iPads, iPhones and Android.

Caspian Learning and Bohemia Interactive Simulations’ joint product, VBSWorlds, was the software that was chosen to build the training because it met or exceeded all of the development and distribution requirement capabilities.

The plan was to develop the game in 2 phases.

The planned first phase was to complete the game for individual learning and web and mobile deployment.

The second phase, not yet delivered, is to deploy the same game in a multiplayer format with additional training scenarios.

Boarders Ahoy!

For the first phase, the actual game itself was designed using the existing content from the existing library of training materials. These materials included a mixture of power point slides, training manuals and subject matter expertise.

As they were, they were not immersive, engaging or scalable but, perhaps most importantly, they were rich in good subject content.

Using VBSWorlds (and without needing to commission a brand new range of elearning modules that were more engaging) NATO were able to transform these content rich traditional elearning materials into an immersive virtual training scenario – an interactive ‘game’.

Boarders Ahoy aimed to capture the highly engaging atmosphere created by a game environment whilst duplicating the behaviour changing objectives of the existing high quality learning.

In order to achieve this, the game was set in the most immersive environment suitable; in this case, onboard a cargo ship. The learner (‘player’) plays the part of an investigating officer who is given the task of identifying illicit cargo or suspicious activity during a maritime interdiction operation.

The processes by which the officer attempts to identify illegal activities are taken from the existing learning material and transformed into scenes within the game.

For example, in the screenshot above, the learner is exploring a container full of crates in the 3D environment. He can choose to investigate any of the crates for more information.

If the information presented sounds suspect, then the learner can flag it as suspect for further investigation. This action is then recorded into an LMS so that the learner’s score can be recorded and actionable feedback given at the end of the exercise.

The cargo ship contains many similar investigative scenarios including cargo, crew and rooms as well as several more.

Each different type of investigative scenario was built from the existing training content.

By the time the player completes the ‘game’, he will have completed the entire training course specific to that type of operation.

Whenever and Wherever It’s Required

As well as the key requirement to deliver the project in a more engaging way, it was also necessary to deliver the project so that the finished learning could be consumed on a wide range of devices; including PCs, Web and Mobile – wherever they were required in the world.

Successfully having this capability would make the solution infinitely more scalable.

In the case of Boarders Ahoy, this problem was overcome by VBSWorlds’ built-in capability to deploy simulations and games at the push of a button in formats suitable for a number of different devices.

This meant that the Boarders Ahoy game could be played on PCs and laptops as a standalone application or through an internet browser via Java or, alternatively, on either an iOS (iPad or iPhone) or Android mobile device.

Using any of these delivery methods would allow learners to consume the game whenever or wherever they were required to whilst facilitating individual self-paced learning outside of the classroom.

Having Boarders Ahoy available in the Android Marketplace, for instance, instantly makes it more accessible to the cohort.

Timeframes

The timeframe to deliver Phase One of the Boarders Ahoy project was dramatically reduced by the availability of existing materials and NATO’s willingness to support their use in the new ‘game’.

With a skilled team of instructional designers working on the project, Caspian Learning was able to complete the project in just 3 months.

The time to complete the project includes design, testing and distribution.

In summary; the time it took to develop this highly engaging immersive virtual training ‘game’ was comparative to the time it had previously taken to create the traditional elearning.

Outcomes

Phase one of the NATO Boarders Ahoy project successfully delivered on several key objectives:

• It improved the scalability of the learning materials available to students
• It increased the engagement levels of students
• It allowed the existing training materials to be easily converted to a more engaging format
• It allowed the new ‘game’ to be distributed whenever and wherever it was required