Training and simulation products developed and deployed for the government should target a common operating environment that expects compatibility, interactivity, and security. Diverse, training application and content developers generally do not create standardized or interoperable software environments, leaving large organizations with stovepipes of content that is challenging to integrate and manage. New models of continuous integration/continuous deployment environments, such as the USAF Platform One, establish unified delivery spaces for software development, but do not yet support a unified training system for specialized content development. Building virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (extended reality, or XR, collectively) training systems, training content, and enabling technologies using a modular open systems approach (MOSA), provides the opportunity for a central hub which allows discovery, distribution, and reuse of different types of digital assets (e.g., XR applications, XR lessons, 3D models, AI/ML models, assessment tools, visualization tools). Enabling the hub to support a sharing economy that features the authors of the digital assets demonstrates the conceptual advantages of open-source development to the training systems and training content marketplace. There are still process, programmatic, and contractual challenges, and considerations, including how to define who can access, share, re-use, and modify assets, and how author credit designation and/or license fees might be handled. Ensuring that a central hub respect data rights, incentivize contributors and fuels a collaborative ecosystem is imperative to the success of a centralized hub. This paper describes the design, development, and instantiation of a centralized hub for the discovery and distribution of immersive, XR training technologies. The methodology for overcoming some of the challenges is discussed, with preliminary results from several pilot programs with over 30 individual third-party training application vendors. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned and future considerations for leveraging a centralized hub to accelerate change in immersive learning.
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Permissions Framework, Knowledge Economy, Ecosystem, Platform, MOTAR