We reported earlier this week that the U.S. Air Force had opened MyBase in Second Life for recruiting purposes. Compared to the big plans initially laid out in the Air Force's white paper on the virtual world, which was meant to go on to include training, staging grounds, and more, the premise seemed a bit like a slow start. Chris Badger, VP, Marketing, Forterra Systems, told me that there's much more on the way.
"It's just going to be used for recruiting, and a little bit of PR, but certainly we are one of the vendors bidding for a much, much larger contract that will be used in a much larger manner behind the Air Force's firewall," sad Badger.
The Second Life version of MyBase seems to have been largely developed internally by the Air Force, according to this report, specifically a team lead by Maj. Gen. Erwin Lessel, director of Plans, Programs, Requirements and Assessments in the Air Education and Training Command, and another from Air University’s Innovations and Integrations Division headed by Mike McCrocklin.
Future developments are prompting the Air Force to look outside of its ranks for more help. The RFP for MyBase was issued in September and set to close in November, but the Air Force, which is working to replace a program manager on the project, hasn't announced any decisions yet.
"That hasn't been awarded yet. What was done in Second Life was a lightweight phase one. There's much bigger money at stake for these other phases. This will drive a lot of what the Air Force does in virtual worlds," said Badger. "From our perspective, this will be a very good project to follow. The Air Force has been visionary in the different ways they're going to use a virtual world. They're really got a comprehensive vision about what they can do in a virtual world. It will be an ambitious, multi-year rollout. "
The same might be said of the Army's recent announcement of a recruiting facility in Second LIfe. While the virtual world may not have the numbers to support recruiting efforts of any real scale, the Army has other irons in the virtual worlds fire, several of which are projects with Forterra.
"I think you should assume they'll do the same thing. There's much more ambitious plans," said Badger.
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