The Wide Area Virtual Environment
- Lessons Learned

Eric Acosta, Jamie Cope, Valerie Henry, Grady Wier,
Raymond Machacon, Richard Madrid, and Alan Liu

MMVR 2014

Workshop Presentations

Click presentation title to open file

  • Workshop Introduction

    Alan Liu


    This is a brief overview of the WAVE program at the Val G. Hemming Simulation Center in Silver Spring, MD as well as the smaller WAVE-let at Camp Bullis in San Antonio, TX.



  • Designing the WAVE

    Alan Liu


    The concept of combining a virtual environment with live action, human patient simulators, and part task trainers is not new. However, few have attempted to accomplish this on the same scale as the WAVE. In this presentation, I will describe the motivation behind the development of the WAVE. The timeline of key events will be presented. I will discuss how key design elements have evolved over the course of development, and some of the lessons learned along the way.



  • Validating Training Effectiveness of Wide Area Virtual Environment (WAVE)
    in Medical Simulation

    Grady Wier(presented by Richard Madrid)


    The WAVE training validation study will look to assess the effectiveness and measure the sense of realism of the platform. This presentation steps through the background and purpose of the study and highlights the significance and potential impact the data may produce.



  • The Camp Bullis WAVE Program

    Raymond Machacon (presented by Richard Madrid)


    Military warfighters are likely to encounter patients with devastating wounds, including single limb or multiple-limb amputations due to blast injuries in theater. Warfighter and medical personnel success in handling these injuries largely depends on the quality of training they receive prior to deployment. Recent advances in medical simulation have the potential to enhance the quality of this training. These enhancements include a higher degree of accuracy and reliability, and could result in improved psychomotor skills, cognitive ability, and safety. The WAVE reflects one such technological advance. In 2012, The Air Force began utilizing the WAVE to support several courses at the Medical Readiness Training Center at Camp Bullis. This brief will cover the history and growth of the WAVE program at Camp Bullis. It will touch on the scenarios, pre-briefing, debriefing, curriculum integration and the future of the WAVE.



  • Considerations for a Distributed 3D Virtual Environment

    Jamie Cope


    The software backbone for the Wide Area Virtual Environment provides synchronized audio and video across a massive distributed cluster. Platform choices and enhancements have been driven by challenges of speed, reliability, and dynamism. Current improvements strive for commercial-quality graphics while maintaining the speed and responsiveness necessary for an interactive virtual environment.



  • Creating a Dynamic 4D Environment

    Valerie Henry


    The virtual scenes of the Wide Area Virtual Environment transport users to specific situations and locations where they can carry out their training event. When building a scene for a platform such as the WAVE, focus is placed on creating a realistic environment through 3D models, textures, sounds, special FX and animation, all while keeping the end user in mind. In order to make the training platform dynamic, the virtual worlds must be set up in such a way that scene specific events can be set to triggers and launched at will. This presentation will walk through the scene creation process from the planning stage through to a finished product.



  • Enhancing the Immersive Experience & Monitoring/Controlling the WAVE

    Eric Acosta


    In order to provide an immersive training experience, the WAVE cannot simply be a "forgotten backdrop." The virtual environment (VE) and physical world should react to each other. This talk describes our efforts for integrating devices that generate physical reactions (e.g. debris, smell, smoke, and destruction) in response to user and virtual environment actions. Optical tracking is also used to track individuals in the training space, and support the use of simulated weapons in combat-related scenarios.

    The hardware infrastructure required to operate the WAVE has greatly increased in complexity. It includes 50+ computers, 48 projectors, optical tracking, effects devices and A/V equipment. This talk also covers the underlying networked design of the WAVE and how we are able to monitor and control it from a remote control station.