The GameTech 2012 conference took place 28-30 March in Orlando, FL. GameTech is conducted annually in conjunction with the Army Games For Training (AGFT) Conference. GameTech maintained its reputation for excellence as a leading conference for the defense industry’s game, virtual world, and mobile training users. This year was the first time that the National Center for Simulation (NCS) ran the conference and it was the largest and most successful GameTech yet. Over 780 people attended the three-day show that featured more than 140 speakers and over 90 tutorial sessions. Attendees had hands-on time with next generation technologies and techniques that are taking the industry to the next level.

Keynotes and Featured Speakers

This year’s event included two inspiring conference keynotes: General Edward A Rice, US Air Force, Commander of the Air Education Training Command (AETC) and Mr. Michael Jones, Google’s Chief Technology Advocate. General Rice talked about how emerging technologies will aid in future Air Force training. Michael Jones shared a vision of how Google’s technology, including Google Earth, can provide informal educational opportunities to our youth.

Mr. Frank DiGiovanni, Director, Training Readiness and Strategy, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Readiness), provided the Virtual World Track Keynote. He unveiled the initial release of the Virtual World Framework, an open architecture platform that allows developers to build components for a 3D internet. ADL is looking forward to experimenting with the exciting capabilities envisioned for this platform. Look for more about the Virtual World Framework on our website soon.

Presentations by ADL

ADL staff, along with other Team Orlando members, helped with both the planning and execution of the conference and also gave several presentations. We presented the following topics during GameTech 2012:

• Jason Haag, Mobile Learning 101: A general overview of mobile learning definitions and examples including the ADL Mobile Learning Team’s development of an app to support multiple devices and the choices made during development.
• Jason Haag, Using the jQuery Mobile Framework for Mobile Content Development: This hands-on tutorial was designed to help get you started exploring jQuery for building mobile content. The jQuery Framework will fast track your mobile apps and get you up and running.
• Jeffery Mills, Helpful Practices for Importing 3D Meshes into Second Life and OpenSim: Expanding upon his recent blog post Jeffery Mills explained the process of taking 3D Meshes and importing them into common virtual worlds. His presentation demystified the many issues that crop up during import.
• Jennie Bottone, Elaine Raybourn, Applying Transmedia Principles to Training: Transmedia is an exciting new opportunity to combine multiple media outlets to create a single training environment. This presentation explained the basic concepts and delved into how they could be applied to the training world.
• Peter Smith, Serious Games 101: Explored the past, present, and future of serious games. Attendees learned about serious games from their humble beginnings through the exciting current state of their evolution (with hands-on demos).
• Peter Smith, Jenn McNamara, Top 10 Serious Gaming Trends – Lessons Learned from the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge (SGS&C): This presentation explored the history of the SGS&C to extract usable lessons learned on how to build serious games and in what directions the industry seems to be heading.
• Rob Chadwick, Jono Poltrack, Serious Gaming Tools for Distance Learning: This session covered how to implement SCORM in a traditional web-based game by exploring the Unity3D SCORM Toolkit. It also delved into the future of new technologies in SCORM environments through a discussion of Next Generation SCORM.
• Rob Chadwick, ADL 3D Repository Progress Status and Updates on New Features: This presentation covered the current state and future of the 3D Repository.

Check the GameTech for copies of the presentation slides, available soon.