Army Plans to Develop Virtual World on New UCF Super Computer; Forterra Working with University

With $2.6 million from the Army, The University of Central Florida Institute for Simulation & Training will now play home to a supercomputer boasting 2 teraflops of processing power and 20 terabytes of memory. As a part of the grant, the Army plans to use the supercomputer to develop an avatar-based, 3D training environment for war games hosting thousands of players around the world.

"The trend line in virtual training is going toward these massive multiplayer environments," Michael R. Macedonia, general manager of the Orlando unit of Forterra Systems Inc, told The Orlando Sentinel. "And the fact that UCF and the Army are making this kind of commitment to supercomputer electronics will make this region a leader in the field."

Forterra has partnered with the university to study how simulation applications, including its own OLIVE solution, can be run to take advantage of supercomputer-level processing power, according to a separate press release.

“The commercial market also is looking for highly scalable 3D collaboration and training applications, including building distributed networked communities,” Macedonia said in the statement, “so the published results will be valuable outside the Army, too.”