Virtual Heroes Division Of Applied Research Associates, Inc. Releases Download Of Emergency Response Game Zero Hour

Web release of Virtual Heroes' Zero Hour: America’s Medic, a first-person 3D video game for training emergency responders, enables no-cost access to EMS training.

Raleigh, NC (PRWEB) October 10, 2014-The Virtual Heroes Division of Applied Research Associates, Inc. (ARA) has released a free download of Zero Hour: America’s Medic, a first-person 3D video game for training emergency responders to handle mass casualty incidents. Built on the Unreal Engine 3, Zero Hour lets users assume triage, treatment, and incident command roles during simulated natural disasters and biologic, chemical, and other terrorist attacks.

Virtual Heroes developed Zero Hour for George Washington University’s Office of Homeland Security, via a grant from the Department of Homeland Security. The game trains pre-hospital emergency medical service (EMS) practitioners such as paramedics and first responders. Users practice high-stakes decision making in various first-person single-player 3D environments, including a residential neighborhood, a financial district, a baseball stadium, and a train station. The Zero Hour web release marks the first time this training game is available to the public at no cost.   

“We’re committed to creating a wide range of training content and modalities in the emergency response space,” said Randy Brown, Virtual Heroes Division Manager. “Zero Hour provides a wide range of virtual environments and training scenarios, such as a biologic incident response. This immersive application provides timely and relevant practice scenarios for first responders, including mass casualty incident scenarios for over 100 simultaneous virtual patients. With this web release, we’re excited to provide access for all EMS providers around the globe to high-quality game-based medical training, completely free of charge.”

Virtual Heroes has won multiple awards for its simulations, serious games and 3D virtual worlds using Unreal Engine technology to provide interactive learning solutions for healthcare, federal systems, and corporate training.

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About Applied Research Associates, Inc. & Virtual Heroes
Applied Research Associates, Inc. (ARA) was founded 1979, in Albuquerque, N.M., to solve problems of national importance by providing science and engineering research, technical support services. The company’s applied research delivers scientific solutions for national defense, homeland security, aerospace, healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing. With 1,100 Employee Owners at locations in the U.S. and Canada, ARA offers a broad range of technical expertise in defense technologies, civil engineering, computer software and simulation, systems analysis, biomedical engineering, environmental technologies, and blast testing and measurement.
The Virtual Heroes Division of Applied Research Associates, Inc. creates collaborative interactive learning solutions for healthcare, federal systems, and corporate training markets. Advanced Learning Technologies (ALT) leverage simulation learning and digital games-based training paradigms to accelerate learning, increase user proficiency, and reduce training costs. Virtual Heroes is located in Raleigh, N.C., and in Orlando, Fla. in the Central Florida Research Park.

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About Unreal Engine 3
Developed by Epic Games, the award-winning Unreal Engine is known for its cutting-edge graphics, best-of-breed tools and scalability across multiple platforms. Unreal Engine 3’s highly mature toolset and content pipeline consistently evolve along with its advanced mobile features, multi-core processor support, optimizations for numerous platforms and massive world support. Unreal Engine 3 is designed to accelerate developers' productivity for computer and video games, mobile games and applications, training simulations, 3D visualizations, digital films and animated entertainment. Integrated with two dozen leading middleware technologies, Unreal Engine 3 holds more than 20 technology awards, including eight Game Developer Front Line Awards and five Develop Industry Excellence Awards. Additional information on Unreal Engine 3 can be obtained at http://www.unrealengine.com.