ORLANDO — A company with U.S. headquarters in Orlando has built a virtual reality-based world that allows the military to train soldiers in combat using any American city as a backdrop.
Bohemia Interactive Simulations plans to unveil its newest effort, which incorporates Google Earth data to replicate any U.S. city, at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in Orlando, in December.
“We have made it easy to build out any area of the earth” virtually, said Peter Morrison, Bohemia Interactive founder and co-CEO. VBS Image Generator “pulls from several data sets.”
The defense conference brings together all military branches with private companies that show off their latest work in hopes of making connections and potentially landing contracts.
Bohemia has 68 of its 250 employees in its Orlando office and has, in the past, used the conference to land work with the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy.
Central Florida is home to the simulation arms of most of the U.S. Armed Forces branches, including the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force.
I/ITSEC also helps companies like Bohemia make contacts that can lead to follow-up contracts. That’s how the company landed a contract with U.S. Marine Corps.
“It’s really the easiest way to access government contractors,” Morrison said of the conference.
I/ITSEC debuted in 1966 and has since grown to become one of the largest simulation and modeling shows in the world.
It has undergone several name changes and features some of the biggest names in simulation, including Lockheed Martin, Rockwell Collins, and hundreds of military contractors.
The show’s location puts it right in the middle of Orlando’s robust simulation cluster.
“Outreach and visibility in the technologies you are working on is critical to reach a larger audience,” said retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom Baptiste, who now heads the Orlando-based National Center for Simulation. “It could be competitors, it could be the government or it could be other industries working on similar things. It’s a way to generate more partnerships.”
Baptiste makes clear that sales do not happen at the show.
Instead, it can be a place for market research or to showcase what a company has been building, in the hopes of future partnerships and sales.
“It’s a full-court press by Central Florida and even broader Florida to show their stuff,” he said.
Baptiste says he expects more people to visit the show than last year, when roughly 15,000 attended.
Lockheed Martin, which employs roughly 7,000 people in Central Florida, also used I/ITSEC to showcase its new tech and to make connections, said Bob Kilmer, vice president of engineering and technology for the company’s Rotary and Mission Systems division.
Lockheed often invites VIPS in town for the show to its own “Innovation Demonstration Center” at its Sand Lake Road campus, to show off what the company has built to both customers and potential employees.
The company has partnered with University of Central Florida for an internship program that Bob Kilmer, vice president of engineering and technology in the company’s Rotary and Mission Systems division, says uses the demo center to recruit talent.
Kilmer said I/ITSEC allows companies from around the world, from military, to medical, to movie industries to demonstrate their products at one venue. “We’re excited to showcase our latest products and be surrounded by other innovative training companies,” Kilmer said.
That is what has brought Bohemia Interactive to the show since 2006, when the Prague, Czechoslovakia,-based company first entered the U.S. market.
So far, Morrison said, the company has seen I/ITSEC as a success.
“Every year there will be one new customer,” Morrison said. “that usually results in at least one new contract.”
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