Army Launches $50 Million Videogame Push

Sorry ahead of time if this is in the wrong forum or a double post. I did search first but I did not find anything.

blog.wired.com...

The Army's Training and Doctrine Command is getting ready to pour $50 million into videogames that'll help troops get ready for combat.

Development won't start until 2010, Stars & Stripes reports. The games themselves wont be ready until 2015. By then, the U.S. military will be in its eighth decade, using games to prep troops for war -- starting with primitive, 1940s flight simulators bought from a Coney Island amusement park.

This isn't the Army's first stab at developing games, either. In 1999, the Army teamed up with gaming and Hollywood pros to found the Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles; it's become one of the world's most advanced schools for simulation-building. 2002 saw the debut of the wildly-successful shoot-em-up, America's Army, developed by the military as a recruiting tool. In 2004, the Army set up a videogame studio in North Carolina. Last year, Training and Doctrine Command opened a new office for gaming.

While soldiers wait to see the results from the Army's latest, $50 million gaming venture, troops around the world will get new gaming consoles.

Leslie Duvow, project director for gaming at PEO-STRI (Program Executive Office - Simulation and Training), tells Stars & Stripes that the Army will have 70 gaming systems in 53 locations in the United States, Germany, Italy and South Korea by September 2009.

"Each system will consist of 52 computers with ancillary equipment including steering wheels, headsets and mice," she said.

Soldiers will be able to drive virtual vehicles, fire virtual weapons, pilot virtual unmanned aerial vehicles and do "most anything a soldier does" in a virtual battle space as large as 100 kilometers by 100 kilometers, she said.

Man I would love to get my hands on this game!!!

Are they possibly getting ready for something big?

They already use a very similar piece of software called virtual battlespace 2 by Bohemia Interactive.

I have the 'lite' version called Arma, it's very immersive indeed.

I'm looking forward to this as a member of the US Army. I'm interested in the amount of power one of those stations are going to be taking if they are trying to cover every aspect like others are trying in commercial physics engines and the like. Imagine the amount of ram, hard drive space and processor power it's going to take for something like this.

spec_ops_wannabe

It's be pretty nice if rather than a few suits sending hordes of kids to have their faces blown off for whatever cause du joir happened to fit their fancy waring nations could submit a team of pale basement nerds to battle some virtual war/tournament.

Of course the obvious problem would be ensuring the honoring of the terms by the winning and losing sides which would no doubt result in actual conflict.

Cant escape war but you sure can relabel it and put a bow on it from time to time.

Has anyone considered that maybe games such as Metal Gear Solid and Fallout (or any first person shooter with a military theme) is an attempt to gain interest in the military to help recruitment efforts?

An interesting possibility in my opinion and not one that is far fetched. In fact, it seems very plausible...

Originally posted by MemoryShock
Has anyone considered that maybe games such as Metal Gear Solid and Fallout (or any first person shooter with a military theme) is an attempt to gain interest in the military to help recruitment efforts?

An interesting possibility in my opinion and not one that is far fetched. In fact, it seems very plausible...

The military has been involved in games for a while for recruiting purposes. Obviously with games like Americas Army and ad campaigns during the Halo 3 release and others games.

If technology gets to the point where I can be shot in the face 12 times and just hide behind a rock until the red thumping stops and I'm all better or the invention of a "reset" button comes around I'd be all about the military and sign right up. As it is the few moments of terror laced excitement before it all goes black for eternity doesnt sound too enticing.

We had a similar "game" if you will when I was in. I don't think it really prepared me for the first AK I heard shot at me... I think flying simulators are great, I don't see how this will help the Army.

Wow, the first thing that came to mind when I read this post, was that Tenerife Disaster "Seconds from disaster - Air Crash Investigation episode" I watched a while back

For those of you not familiar with it here is a summary

Tenerife Disaster The Tenerife disaster took place on March 27, 1977, at 17:06:56 local time (also GMT), when two Boeing 747 airliners collided at Los Rodeos (TCI) on the island of Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, killing 583 people. The accident still has the highest number of fatalities (excluding ground fatalities) of any single accident in aviation history. The aircraft involved were Pan Am Flight 1736, named Clipper Victor, under the command of Captain Victor Grubbs, and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Flight 4805, named Rijn (Rhine River), under the command of Captain Jacob Veldhuyzen van Zanten. KLM 4805, taking off on the only runway of the airport, crashed into the Pan Am aircraft which was taxiing on the same runway.

Here is a link to that investigation video:
video.google.com...

It was said that, due to Captain Jacob Veldhuyzen van Zanten having spent many hours as a trainer on flight simulations, that it possibly caused him not to distinguish between real life consequences, and a mere computor game.

Anyhow the point I was going to make was, just as with the KLM pilot in the Tenerife Disaster, these new training methods will involve computer simulated events.

Which in turn could impair these soldiers/pilots ability to distinguish between "hitting restart" & "real death" situation, causing them to fight much braver/more risky than they would have.