Projects in VR: the Naval Postgraduate School's Moves curriculum

Both the National Research Council (NRC) report "Virtual Reality: Scientific and Technological Challenges" and the more recent NRC report "Modeling and Simulation: Linking Entertainment and Defense" discuss the need for nontraditional degree programs that focus more closely on the issues of how we develop the software and content for networked virtual environments (VEs). Both reports point out that the more effective VE developer is not just a computer scientist, electrical engineer, or human factors specialist, but rather a scientist who sits in-between, a scientist whose education melds the precise parts required for developing VEs. To produce such graduates requires new degree programs. The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) has developed one such program, the Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation (Moves) degree program (http://www.moves.nps.navy.mil/). We present the composition of that degree program and its relationship to the research our students can then handle at the end of that program.