As the weather gets colder and colder, many of us would rather remain indoors than freeze our balls playing airsoft. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the biggest selling FPS games in history time their releases in Autumn,  with the onset of the cold weather, many airsoft players would have want to play FPS whilst not playing airsoft and thus that's hungry market to tap. I might be stretching it, but heck, it might be one of real reasons why.

Some of us might want more than just staring at a computer screen and fragging other players in multiplayer games. If you're in the military or police and your or unit purchased the latest product from Northrop-Grumman then you might enjoy a toy that perhaps Billionaires might easily get --- the VIPE Holodeck.

Called the Virtual Immersive Portable Enviroment (VIPE) Holodeck, the concept is eerily similar to the Gadget Show's Ultimate Battlefield 3 Simulator which we wrote about two years ago.  As its name implies, it is an immersive environment which looks like it uses a good number of projects, and the Microsoft's Kinect which allows the user to actually hold a rifle rather than a game controller.

A soldier or policeman in the VIPE Holodeck can walk, run, and even crawl and thus a simulation can be an exhausting exercise as the whole body is involved rather than just fingers and eyes in a FPS video game.

Being portable, the VIPE Holdeck can easily be transported to other locations even in remote bases where operators may need an enclosed environment to practice or simulate mission scenarios before heading out to accomplish the real mission. You can put network several of these holodecks together and thus have a cool multiplayer session, albeit it's more related to training rather than just for kicks.

It is easier to do some feedback in this environment as recording will be more straightforward, providing good footage that can be used for critique and self critique in After Action Reviews (AARs). You can easily trace the steps where you made mistakes and also be able to find out what you did right and strengthen on it.

It would be nice to have this at home, provided that you have enough space for it and the trust fund to draw the money to buy one of these.  But since I have neither, my last hope would be that jolly old man with a beard and red costume who lives in the North Pole.