U.S. Military Sets Sights on Virtual World

The Navy wants some war games-- literally.

The Washington Times is reporting that the U.S. Military is starting to get interested in using virtual worlds for a variety of training and simulation situations.

The U.S. Navy recently announced it was looking for a contractor to develop "a highly interactive, PC-based Human, Social and Culture Behavioral Modeling simulation tool to support training for military planners for handling insurgencies, small wars and/or emergent conflicts."

According to a procurement document posted online, the software "should be game-based" and must be "flexible enough" to allow users to design their own scenarios, maps and "unique situations" as "plug-in modules to experiment and train with."

Read the article at the Washington Post.