A second hance for Second Life - WSJ.com

hen American soldiers and police officers from across the U.S. want to learn how to operate Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Cutlass bomb disposal robot, they go to the military contractor's secure Space Park installation.

But they don't have to jump in a car or hop on a plane to get there. That's because Space Park exists only in cyberspace, or more specifically, in the computer-generated world called Second Life.

Virtual reality "is not a fly-by-night technology. It's not a passing fad," says Matt Furman, a Northrop Grumman software developer who helped build Space Park, where customers can spend hours training...