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U.S. Army Developing Prototype Holodeck

Posted by Roblimo on from the you-knew-it-had-to-come dept.

Our friend, Anonymous Coward, wrote in to tell us that the U.S. Army is developing what it calls the 'Cave Automatic Virtual Environment'. The facilities use 3d video and various forms of projection technology to create a virtual, interactive environment. Note the recursive acronym. (The story's in the February issue of Popular Science.)

3 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Erm. Been around for some time by PhiRatE · · Score: 4
    These guys make 'em: http://www.evl.uic.edu/EVL/VR/

    The Cave is the big room style VR thing, linking two together may be new, but I doubt it. Whats cool is that the military are using that kind of thing for simulation :)

    --
    You can't win a fight.
  2. The Cave @ SGI by connor_macleod · · Score: 4

    I originally saw this in an SGI magazine about 5 years ago ... the Cave was a cubic room with projections on all sides and one of the environments was a world where you created life (plants, butterflies, music) through your movements.

    Here are a couple of links to the Cave @ SGI: http://www.cio.com/archive/050197_et_content.html
    http://www.sgi.com.au/news/cave.html

    Very cool, the contact for the second one is in Sydney ;)
    -

  3. Is this really a good thing? by Akaji+Monkey · · Score: 5


    I think this is all part of the "virtualizing" of war. Think back to the Gulf War, with all those videos from the video-guided bombs as they home in on the target. It doesn't feel like they're actually killing people, does it?

    I'm willing to bet that people who've been trained in machines like this one don't see it as training for killing - it's all just a big video game, right? Doesn't hurt anyone, right?

    How long will it take before they start representing "targets" as icons rather than real video? "I just wiped out three of those blinking blue squares - what do you suppose they were?"

    Yeah, let's fight a war where one side never has to see any blood, and all the bleeding's done by the other side. Go, U.S. Army! You guys must be real proud of your achievements.