Following on from our previous episode with Joe Robinson, we are joined by Jason Kennedy who is the VP of Engineering at Improbable. Jason has an impressive background in, having previously directed large teams of engineers to push the boundaries of simulation technology for defence and space applications. In a full and frank discussion, Jason describes the challenge for scaling simulation applications for serious training and decision support applications. Coining the term ‘Horizontal Scaling’. Jason covers the demand signal first, laying out the need for improved collaboration between government, academia and industry across simulation technologies. Partly to reduce costs, but more importantly to model and rehearse things that just can’t be done live due to the need for scale, complexity or things that are too dangerous to do in the real world on a live population. Jason goes on to describe what isn’t working and proposes some approaches for improved collaboration and argues the case that there may be some dominant platforms for our ecosystems (such as we see with Apple and Google) but that’s not necessarily a bad thing if it lifts the rest of the industry and academia to innovate. Like the rail network, some monopolies are just a reality we may have to live with, rather than a fragmented approach to developing our infrastructure. As ever we are joined by Andy Fawkes from MS&T, who has curated some of the best stories from the last two weeks across training and simulation. One story that doesn’t seem to go away is the problems with UK MFTS. Andy also covers initiatives to lower the environmental impact of flying training and of course next week is ITEC in Rotterdam, which no doubt will provide a whole host of more interesting news to come!