Short Deadline!

Don't you love short headlines? There is currently a competition running with $50,000 in prizes up for grabs for solving public safety challenges that affect millions of people. Interested? 

Introducing the Virtual Public Safety Test Environment Challenge. The competition offers a total prize of $50,000 USD for the design of a physical measurement environment that uses immersive virtual reality tools for testing new first responder technologies. 

Find out more and sign up to the Virtual Public Safety Test Environment Challenge. https://herox.com/NISTvr

- The submission deadline is May 3rd, 2017 so don’t dawdle! -

3D StereoLab

NextGen 3D Educational Content Series [Part 5 and Series End]
Our last entry into a future hall of fame for educational 3D content is 3DStereoLab. This is a group that demonstrates the most impressive creativity, artistry, and negative parallax I have seen in 3D production to date, bar none. I am talking about absolutely compelling production quality. This firm got its start by pulling together some of the best talent in L.A. and Hollywood, securing a new studio, and pushing the production flywheel forward. Much of their work is for corporate innovation centers, and most recently they have undertaken a large project involving school safety PSAs and simulations for school emergency preparedness training in 3D format.

Michael Page, President/CEO of 3DStereoLab, explains their interest in educational 3D content development: “We believe 3D's impact on the educational space will be similar to the impact of sound to silent film and the addition of color to black and white movies and television.” He adds, “Immersive 3D presentations will be the adopted norm of the future, no doubt about it.” The focus of 3DStereoLabs is on the wants/needs of the education customer:  “We are 3D production experts who fundamentally follow the teacher's lead in developing content which is primarily scripted and approved by qualified teachers.” Their plan is nothing less than to “provide a new technologically advanced immersive learning experience.” 

3DStereoLab founder Michael Page (without 3D glasses) demonstrates Panasonic 

full HD 3D technology to Colorado State Senator Steve King (seated), Littleton Fire Chief 

John Mullin (far left), Chuck Burdick of the Colorado School Safety Task Force (2nd from left),

 and members of the Panasonic delegation attending the signing of Colorado Senate Bill 11-173 

by Governor John Hickenlooper at Rock Canyon High School in Highlands Ranch, Colo. 

(Photo by Chris Schneider)

Michael Page—yes, he’s the same Michael Page of Chubby Checker, Iggy Pop, and David Bowie fame—states that  educational change is what he is all about: “We couldn't think of a more rewarding experience than to apply our knowledge and talents to the good of our children's future.” Their work has already launched in Colorado, a state which has taken the initiative by recognizing the potential impact of 3D on education in the school safety and emergency preparedness arena. So, what happens when better-than-Hollywood 3D production meets K-12 education? Stay tuned and watch what comes out of this group. They can be reached at http://www.3dstereolab.com/

Looking Back

In the light of the recent tragedy in Colorado, I thought it appropriate to quietly revisit three previous Future-Talk 3D blog posts that touch upon the role of stereo 3D in emergency preparedness education.

School Safety

School Safety Part II 
School Safety Update

These three posts sadly take on new meaning and relevance in the light of the past Colorado shooting tragedy. In a future post, I will update our readers on major Panasonic initiatives in this arena.

School Safety Update

The largest hands-on school safety exercise ever staged anywhere is taking place on May 2, 2012, in Pueblo County, Colorado—and with a 3D twist.

This crisis exercise will simulate a high-wind school building collapse resulting in a complex evacuation of 450 children, and the coordinated response efforts of 400 adults. If you’ve ever visited Colorado, you know the meaning of high winds.

This large-scale activity is custom tailored for major video production. The school district is providing three primary shooting locations, the school buses (for the evacuation), the school and district staff as actors, the children (with parental releases), and a new mobile communications unit designed by SchoolSAFE Communications. The county is providing first responders as actors from fire, law enforcement, and emergency management, as well as 5 ambulances, a rescue helicopter, fire equipment, and other public safety vehicles. All local media organizations will also participate, many providing reporters and news crews as actors in the simulation. VIP observers from across the state, coordinated by State Senator Steven King’s office, will observe the exercise and draft a final report. Funding for this activity was provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of the Army.  For further information, you can feel free to contact: johnsimmons@schoolsafetypartners.org

Now comes the 3D part. School Safety Partners and Panasonic will capture the entire event in stereo 3D, with the intent of producing classroom-based simulations and training segments for the school safety market. There remains a strong and burgeoning role for stereo 3D in school safety and emergency preparedness training.

3D School Safety (Part II)

In the previous blog post we announced that SchoolSAFE is currently developing a 3D training simulation for school emergency preparedness. Two key questions surface: “Why use 3D to do this and how does all of this fit in with school safety?

By employing 3D video to train schools in crisis response, SchoolSAFE hopes to evoke a strong “training dividend” from the compelling nature of 3D content. John Simmons (johnsimmons@schoolsafetypartners.org) explains that “by viewing brief 3D scenes, trainees can experience a level of stress that will test their ability to manage the incident as they communicate with first responders” while a school threat unfolds in front of them. “3D has such volume,” he reminds us, and that’s why his organization believes this will succeed. Simmons points out that most school emergencies must be addressed by school staff who are 7 to 20 feet away from the action. This corresponds to the distance from the 3D camera where the 3D effect would be most pronounced. And, according to Simmons, synchronizing 3D viewing with live two-way radio drills provides an intense interactive experience not common in the world of entertainment or gaming.

In addition, using 3D offers some economic advantages. Simmons explains "in these tough economic times, this interactive 3D experience brings down the cost of drills and exercises, and offers more opportunities to schedule high-quality training so that all school personnel and students can benefit." These simulations can also help overcome the challenges of teacher turnover and new incoming classes by maintaining a consistent level of training for newcomers year after year.

The goal of this partnership, an effort notably inspired and led by Colorado State Senator Steve King,  is to bring this training to 30,000 school safety personnel and 800,000 students in Colorado, and ultimately to 2.1 million school safety personnel and over 56 million students nationwide.

So how will schools react? Steve Hoban the Director of Operations, Security & Environmental Services for the Boulder Valley School District, is optimistic. “The use of the 3D technology holds great potential in the world of school safety,” he predicts. 3D technology and training simulations represent “an opportunity to be more efficient with training, while still giving the recipient a more realistic feel for the crisis event being addressed,” he adds.

While attending the most recent meeting of Colorado’s School Safety Task Force, Jim Chabin, who is President of the International 3D Society, agreed:

" Using the immersive strengths of 3D media to better present, illuminate and stimulate educational subjects for students, teachers and leaders responsible for their academic success and safety, is an exciting opportunity. Once again, Colorado's community of committed educational stakeholders is leading the entire country in creating more exciting, and cost effective educational tools for this, and our next, generation of students. "

From a partnership perspective, school safety’s entry into the 3D world will bring a variety of players to the table—hardware, integration services, content development, and advertising. From an educational perspective, school safety could be a school district's first reason to invest in 3D classroom technology.

3D and School Safety

Think for a second about the community you live in. On any given work day, twenty percent of your community is involved in a K-12 environment. And if you add higher education to this count, the total number of community members actively involved in school locations exceeds twenty-five percent. That not only represents a huge footprint for public safety agencies, but a potential security “blind spot” if schools cannot communicate with them during emergencies.

As a result, SchoolSAFE recently announced the launch of a national 3D television campaign during National Safe Schools Week, October 16-22, 2011. SchoolSAFE has selected School Safety Partners to produce the 3D campaign with input from major 3D technology companies and school districts. The campaign will use live-action stereoscopic scenes and stereoscopic 3D animation, and will be delivered to general audiences, school staff, and students using all available platforms. The campaign will show how schools today must plan for a broad range of incidents and emergencies including: an active shooter, animal threats, bomb threats, a bus accident, chemical spills, earthquakes, fire, floods, food contamination, gas odor, intruders, pandemic outbreak, power outages, tornadoes, and severe winter storms.

SchoolSAFE’s plans offer some interesting content implications. “3D television channels are going to be hungry for product and sponsorship. Since the purpose of a TV channel is to use programing to gather a large audience and deliver it to the advertiser, the advertiser's message has to stand out. If channels are producing eye-popping 3D content, 2D advertiser messages are going to fall flat.” School Safety’s John Simmons predicts the emergence of more and more high-quality 3D advertising to fit in and keep stride with the new 3D content. "If our responsibility is to raise awareness in the community and try to influence public opinion about school safety, then our PSAs should be in 3D as well," Simmons says.

School Safety Partners then plans to create an interesting new mashup. It aims to leverage the impact of 3D with the power of interoperable two-way radio to create a pulsing, semi-live training simulation for school emergency preparedness. It’s interesting to note that the vision and impetus behind this effort comes from Colorado State Senator Steve King, who has a strong record in school safety legislation. 

Revisit our FutureTalk 3D blog next week to learn more details about this hallmark effort.