American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE) held a special symposium Technology Enablers for Digital Engineering 2018 at University of Mary Washington, Dahlgren campus. This unique two-day event was held in partnership between the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division and the American Society of Naval Engineers.

Meeting attendees provided a lot of feedback.  Alex Viana summarized, "NAVFAC is meeting the Secretary of the Navy's challenge to drive innovation into Navy business practices and improve ways to connect people, ideas and information on an enterprise-wide level."

Special presentation "Enhancing Systems Engineering Collaboration via 3D Virtual Environments" by Alex Viana and Don Brutzman included remote cross-country collaboration within SPIDERS3D. Further backround information is available in an earlier NAVFAC press release.

Remote participation in the Web-based Pearl Harbor scene was interactive and practical.  Don Brutzman reports: "Connecting to the shared virtual environment environment from thousands of miles away let us communicate and collaborate in real time. SPIDERS3D provides compelling proof positive that the X3D Graphics open standard works."

This event included a live demonstration of the Navy's SPIDERS3D Web-based virtual environment using #X3D. Local and remote interactions showed off server-saved editing and storyboard exploration of typical events in the daily life-cycle of ships and aircraft.  Further outreach is found in a Twitter post.

In attendance and contributing throughout was Mike Russalesi, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Synergy Software Design (SSD) whose company built SPIDERS3D for the U.S. Navy.  Mike observes: "Innovation doesn’t have to be flashy to be incredibly useful. Web browsers are ubiquitous and the X3D open standard for 3D files works within all web browsers. Combining the power of the web with the simplicity of X3D creates an incredible 3D coordination environment that already exists in the Navy."