City Life VR Training Software Update

CityLife is a joint Canada/USA/UK project with the objective of improving the quality of virtual simulation-based training by providing a more realistic virtual reality (VR) environment that simulates life typical of a real city. The VR environment will immerse students into representative scenarios for training skill sets such as surveillance, traffic, security, and personnel protection. City Life will feature realistic indoor and outdoor structures and spaces (i.e., residential and commercial) for one generic North American city and one generic foreign city. 10 000 unique, non-player characters (NPC) and 2000 unique cars will move and interact inside and outside the structures exhibiting realistic behaviors over a 7-day cycle. The learner-controlled avatars will be able to observe the NPC behaviors and, in certain cases, engage in purposeful interaction. Up to 25 learners will be able to collaborate within the multi-player environment.

City Life is a significant improvement upon existing immersive training simulation in terms of realistic patterns of life within a virtual city space thereby increasing the capabilities of law enforcement, military and interagency personnel. Its “open” concept allows users to create their own scenarios based on their desired learning objectives.

Once the development of CityLife is completed (early 2019), it will be available to all Canadian police services. Ideally, users would need driving simulators and VR headsets in order to fully benefit from CityLife.