In a pasture outside Dayton, Ohio, Wilbur and Orville Wright created the first practical airplane and taught themselves to fly it.

They called the place Huffman Prairie and flew the 1905 Wright Flyer III into history on that rough patch of land.

More than 100 years later, Air Force pioneers are creating a legacy in another place called Huffman Prairie, this one in a virtual world called “Second Life.”

“What really drew us out to [the virtual world] was this wonderful opportunity to interact and connect with people on a global scale and with high levels of creativity,” Andrew Stricker of the Air Force’s Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base’s Gunter Annex in Montgomery, Ala., told American Forces Press Service.

“We thought Second Life was perfect for doing innovation work in the Department of Defense,” said Stricker, whose team is part of Air University’s innovations and integration division.

The online world -- one of many now operating in cyberspace -- was launched by San Francisco-based Linden Lab in 2003. Second Life has 20 million registered user accounts from all over the world and is populated by avatars, or digital representations that users create for themselves.

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