Adobe Success Story: ForgeFX: Interactive 3D Simulations

ForgeFX creates competitive advantage for itself and clients with Adobe Director and Adobe Shockwave Player software.



Whether they need to train employees how to accomplish mission-critical tasks or educate potential donors or customers, many organizations are tapping into the power of interactive 3D training simulations and role-playing games. By providing a simulated experience, organizations can help employees, customers, and others learn by doing without the high costs and risks of learning in the field.

ForgeFX relies on Adobe software due to its flexibility and ability to deliver a rich, high-performance user experience. Offering cross-platform offline executable deployment and online browser-based delivery with the Shockwave Player, Director applications can easily be viewed on any computer, enabling superior mass distribution. Users have the convenience of either online or offline content consumption with the ubiquitous Shockwave Player, already installed on more than 450 million Internet-enabled desktops.



One of the main benefits of Director over many other development platforms is its real-time 3D rendering engine. Because Director is a high-level development environment, as opposed to a custom low-level one-off 3D rendering engine, 3D rendering code is delivered out of the box, allowing developers like ForgeFX to concentrate on game and simulation logic. Director also enables ForgeFX to build simulations that include complex physics-based realism.

The new NVIDIA PhysX engine in Adobe Director 11.5 allows us to expand and build advanced dynamic motion and interaction into our simulations and games resulting in a richer user experience. Advanced physics, real-time 3D rendering, and a solid, mature platform with a rock-solid runtime engine are several factors that make Director our primary development platform.

Read the full article which discusses a couple of recent projects developed by ForgeFX using Adobe Director.

Technology Enables Ground Support Equipment Training

Airside International article: Technology Enables GSE Training.

This article discusses the 3D training simulator ForgeFX developed for Global Ground Support. Airside International is a quarterly magazine aimed at airport authorities, airlines, equipment providers, and infrastructure developers. The article includes an interview with Jeffrey Walsh, Vice President of Sales and Service for Global Ground Support, Greg Meyers, President for ForgeFX, and Adam Kane, Technical Director for ForgeFX.



Global Ground Support offers the market the 3D simulation software developed by ForgeFX as part of a package with their equipment. The first simulator was delivered in December 2007 to JetBlue. The deicing simulation has been a huge success and has generated an incredible amount of interest. Global has a simulator with a customer who does not even have any of their trucks, but because the controls are very similar between competitors’ vehicles and their vehicles, they get a lot of the benefit from the 3D simulator.

It is possible to train a ground support operator to use a deicer correctly through simulation-based training in just 30 minutes. In the past, companies would take their new employees, put them through 8, 12, or 16 hours of classroom deicing training, then they would put them in a truck for one, two, or four hours depending upon the customer to teach them how to use the truck. Unfortunately, most of this training took place in August, September, or October. Those new employees might not actually spray an aircraft for several months, they then get into a very complicated piece of equipment in which to perform difficult tasks in a timely fashion. The only piece of equipment on the ramp that is more complicated to operate than a deicer is an aircraft, this clearly demonstrates the need for high quality training.

The training simulation goes beyond just teaching an employee how the controls of the truck work. It gets into the whys of the actual deicing process. It trains not only on truck operation but also on the processes and procedures involved in deicing an aircraft correctly, safely, and cost effectively.

Jeffrey Walsh, Vice President of Sales and Service for Global Ground Support, was able to take his 20 years of airline, airport, deicing, and flying experience; couple it with ForgeFX's simulation development expertise, to create a new deicing training program that brought deicing and simulators to the next level. Global Ground Support is striving to make this simulation equipment increasingly real every day. The next update to the simulator will show the fluid flowing off the wings. It will also have wind speed and wind direction and all sorts of other components that make it even more real. Simulations can never be too real.

Full article: Technology Enables GSE Training
Project case study: Interactive 3D deicing training simulator.

Global Ground Support and ForgeFX Partner to Develop an Interactive 3D Deicing Training Simulator

San Francisco, CA, United States, 02/09/2009 - ForgeFX, a leading interactive 3D simulation and serious game developer, has produced and deployed an aircraft deicing training simulator for Global Ground Support's clients. The simulator allows airport ground support equipment operators to train for the deicing process with more flexibility and a lower cost than traditional training.



Ice, snow, freezing rain, and other contaminants can build up on an aircraft making it dangerous to fly. Deicing is a complex, multi-step process that if done properly returns the aircraft to a clean safe state.

Proper deicing is mission critical, requires a high level of dexterity and spatial relations ability, an intimate knowledge of the aircraft, and the impact of different weather conditions. The challenge is that training is costly, requires the availability of expensive equipment, and must be comprehensive, covering a wide variety of factors including plane type, weather conditions, time of day, wind speed, contamination type, etc.

Global Ground Support’s simulator, based on their model 2200TEAP, addresses these issues. The simulation allows the user to train across a variety of factors. The training simulation offers the ability for users to practice and take a performance test while deicing a virtual aircraft. The simulation tracks the performance of users and records their scores for review by the instructor. The simulation provides both an overall score, as well as a detailed score breakdown, for each simulation session. This scoring system encourages healthy competition among users while learning the correct procedures.

The operator sits in a virtual cab which is attached to a boom arm, which is attached to a truck. The operator of the simulation has full control over the 2200TEAP’s boom arm, cab rotation, truck location, nozzle settings, fluid selection, cab lights, type of plane, time of day, and weather conditions. This gives airlines the ability to train their operators without risking damage to the real-world equipment. Also, virtual training doesn’t use up consumables such as fuel and expensive fluids. Deicing operators must be careful when deicing an aircraft, since a collision between deicing equipment and a plane is costly. A collision requires planes to be grounded and flight delays - a costly mistake in reality becomes a valuable lesson when simulated.

Case Study: Interactive 3D Deicing Training Simulator

ForgeFX’s solid track record in the development of effective simulation products was key to Global Ground Support‘s selection of the ForgeFX team. Representing industry leaders such as Adobe, Pearson Education, Farmers Insurance, Heifer International, and Pfizer, ForgeFX consistently delivers interactive 3D simulations that help achieve their client’s project goals while optimizing their bottom lines.

MTV's Darfur Is Dying Expands With New Localizations

MTV's college network mtvU has announced that it will be expanding its USC developed serious/political awareness game Darfur Is Dying with new translations into Chinese, Arabic and Spanish. MTV says that the game, playable via its official website has been played 2.5 million times by more than 1.2 million people.

Read more at: http://www.darfurisdying.com/

Point-Of-Response Simulator Serves Emergency Response Teams

The University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health, CADE and the Chicago Department of Public Health have developed a free game designed to educate organizations in a simulation of emergency point-of-dispensing (POD).

Read more at: http://www.thepodgame.com/

Advanced Learning Technologies Summit

The first annual Advanced Learning Technologies Summit (ALT Summit) aims to explore how serious games, virtual worlds, social networks and technologies such as robotics and haptics can be leveraged to inspire, educate and train the “next-gen” workforce. It has announced its featured speakers for the inaugural conference.

Read more at: http://altsummit.com/c/portal/layout?p_l_id=PUB.1.97

Stunt Bike Island

After returning from this year's GDC we're working hard to promote our existing web-game, Stunt Bike Island, and also working on new games. It can be tough to bang out internal projects when there is always client work to do, but it's very rewarding all the same. We're currently designing a follow-up to Stunt Bike Island which will be set in an icy environment and is tentatively titled Stunt Bike Arctic.