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Military Grade Gaming
Mr. Obvious writes: "A NYTimes reporter has written an interesting, detailed story about the cutting edge in military simulation --- interpersonal interaction! This is not about flight simulation but about fight-or-flight simulation --- see the article to see what I mean. It's short on screen-shots (just one tiny teaser) but long on critical analysis about such things as the fragility of current simulation technology. Should be of interest not only to computer gamers but also to people interested in simulation technology and its (current) limits (particularly in regards to modeling real human behavior)."
http://www.planetquake.com/dday
people got into a huge discussion on the message board about how some players were saying that they "played bravely to honour their dead grandpa" and thats why they didn't use cheats and didn't hop like bunnies all over the map.
the other players said that while not cheating is a good thing the only thing that would convice them that they were being brave was if someone wrote a pak file that would "on your death, send a signal through the printer port to 3lbs of Comp D strapped to the back of your seat."
however, I wouldn't be surprised if someone would try this, or at least stick a can of mace onto their monitors to squirt themselves with everytime they got hit by the flamethrower
to give you some idea about how realistic the team has tried to make it, it has the following features:
1) Truesight. You can fire "from the hip" with low accuracy and your gun shakes all over the place, or you can hit shift and the weapon model moves so that you can look down the barrel, you move a little slower - especially if you lie prone and crawl on the ground -(needless to say anyone using a crosshairs other than the one that comes on the sniper gun will get caught as a cheat)
2) jumping stamina. we had a problem with bunnies that thought that dday was quake. Now they get a little tired and cant jump after 2 or 3 hops, and we kill them.
3) grenades that bounce realistically, throw out both flame and shrapnel and can be picked up and thrown back at the enemy.
4) virtually all your cover can be destroyed by hmg fire or rockets in the newer missions (walls blow down etc)
5)friendly fire is set to on
6)each class is has a unique skin, but you can pick up the weapons from anyone of any team and use them. it's not uncommon to see a usa infantary kill a german officer and run away with his submachine gun as a souvineer.
7) callable artiliary is simulated
8) flame throwers are simulated
9) airborn infantary is simulated
10) you bleed. until a medic sees to you.
11) sometimes you have to use the team shout key to get someone to "climb up on my shoulders" in order to capture some objectives.
12) when you die, you go to the death room, until such time that it would be reasonable for reinforcements to enter the area.
Seems like he might have set himself up to be the target, if everyone was thinking "Quake-boy is dangerous. Get Quake-boy first, then worry about everyone else."
Not that I know anything about what was going on, mind you, I'm just reading into the previous post.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
"The military" already does testing like this, it's called field exercises. (At least, the Canadian Forces do, I can't imagine that there's any other serious military force that doesn't.)
The point of using a computer is to reduce costs - it's expensive to keep people in the field - and time involved. That being said, IMO the only way to simulate your reactions after marching 16 hours in extreme heat is to... well, march 16 hours in extreme heat.
I had some pretty surprising orders passed down to me in field exercises with commanders under stress, and I'm glad these were exercises and not Real Life(tm).
Your history about the advances the military have made in distributed 3D simulation environments is false.
For you computer scientists out there, the military is doing something quite large and interesting.
The HLA, the high level architecture, is a system for integrating different simulation systems into one big networked simulator.
The problems are more severe than in the current large multiplayer games because you have to link people up fairly and be realistic and you have to link different systems together.
http://www.operation-flashpoint.net/
It's one of the top five games i've ever seen. The Release in Europe is expected tomorrow. The techies are allready lining up at the stores. In the US you can take a look at the demo for which about 200 homemade missions are allready available.
CU on the battlefield, Martin
I submitted the NRDC report to slashdot, the editors apparently didn't find it that interesting. Oh well, it's up at kuro5hin.
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Chapters 4 and 5 of the report have the analysis of the SIOP for counterforce and countervalue. I've talked to a couple of people who can give informed comments and their only disagreement is the fission component of the weapons used. They regard the assumptions used in targeting as reasonable. Note that the damage calculation part of the sim uses actual code from DoD and LLNL.
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There's an analysis of the likely SIOP at the NRDC. You may be interested in the section on how the ran their sim.
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Actually, you're right - there's a lot of attention being paid to psychological training of our troops.
Do a keyword search for "the three-block war", or variants thereof.
So yes, a lot of attention is being paid to these issues. Other keywords to search for: MOUT (Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain), "OBUA" (Operations in Built Up Areas), and "FIBUA" (Fighting In Built Up Areas).
The hardest part of the soldier's job, IMHO, will be in figuring out which block he's in at any given moment. That's where the training will pay off - both in terms of protecting our troops, and for (well, at least in blocks one and two ;-) the native population.
Ever use a Super Nintendo?
Then you have used the same machine the US military uses to train troops in rifle marksmanship. Strange, but true. http://www.oh-tagnet.com/tadss/wpns/macs.htm
MACS are excellent devices to train soldiers. I know because my shooting scores increased after significant practice on a MACS. Furthermore, they let more soldiers get "trigger time" but save money and the environment. Sweet deal.
Rangers Lead the Way!
The US Army has such a major interest in simulation that it maintains two separate centers in this area: the National Simulation Center in Fort Levenworth KS and STRICOM (Simulation, Training and Instrumentation Command). Check em' out!
I was there with my battallion from the 10th MTN Division in 1991, and I can tell you that by the time most soldiers actually get into a "shoot/no-shoot" situation, they're already in a state that no video game can replicate.
1) They're tired. Military operations are 'round-the-clock affairs. Nobody ever gets enough sleep (except for pilots) ;-)
2) They're nervous. Even in "routine" situations, the adrenaline can run pretty high. For example, while on patrols in Kismayo, Somalia, we would often encounter young men who would hide in alleyways with sticks or small lengths of pipe held behind their backs. They'd whip these things out as you approached, and each and every time, you'd have to decide in a split-second if the thing was a weapon or just a stick.
3) They're dealing with visual conditions. If it's hot and sticky, and you've been on a patrol for a long period of time, you're going to be even more tired than usual. Your long-range visual acuity can be seriously hampered by glare. Sure, you can wear sunglasses, but then you're at a disadvantage in shadows.
4) They're often overburdened with equipment. Read this: this for a few notes on how the soldier's load can affect combat performance.
5) They're dealing with sound issues. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to pinpoint gunfire's point of origin. Test it yourself: Next time you hear a jet plane overhead, time how long it takes for you to find it, then imagine someone is shooting at you while you're looking. In crowd situations, it's even worse.
6) Terrain can have a tremendous effect. Dense jungle canopy, for example, tends to make you nervous all the time (unless you grew up in in, I suppose). At the Jungle Warfare School at Ft. Sherman, Panama, we'd go on 4-6 hour patrols, and the entire time we'd be constantly on edge because our OPFOR were likely to pop up anywhere.
The problem with any form of simulation is that the further removed you get from real situations, the less likely the training is to provide any real value. In fact, even in the most realistic training environments possible,. like the NTC and JRTC, "perfect" training is impossible.
The MILES laser training system tends to reward use of concealment as cover, for example. While bushes may stop MILES lasers, they don't stop bullets. Even with disadvantages like this, there's no substitute for out in the mud, getting your ass run down and tired, stressed out, is-that-guy-gonna-kill-me-or-not, why-in-the-hell-am-I-here training.
The JRTC is an excellent example of hands-on training that works. There are many situations during a JRTC rotation in which soldiers will have to deal with "civilians" whose motives are unclear. They'll have to try and win over the population by using their brains and communicating with them. The intangibles that computer simulations simply can't replicate are all there at the JRTC.
While I understand the need to save money in training, this is a supreme case of You Get What You Pay For.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"Because many of the models are ginned up by computer scientists who don't know anything about human behavior."
Another Computer Scientist unknowningly explains the tragic lack of sex amongst those in his field.
_sig_ is away
This spring during this OOD class I was taking at UT-Austin, the teacher gave an example of code resuse taken a bit too far (it lead into better ways to do what the programmers were trying to do). You will I hope pardon that I can't give any attribution or backup material for this, she didn't give any and I didn't think at the time to ask her...
Apparently, the Australian army wanted to make a flight sim to train helicopter pilots/gunnery officers on, complete with all the things you'd expect like infantry, ground vehicles, various and sundry air units, and non-combatants like civilians and atmosphere critters like kangaroos. This is in the early 90s from what I recall her saying.
So the programmers naturally spend most of their time working on the "active" interaction objects, i.e. the ones the pilots/gunners will most likely be shooting at: infantry and vehicles. (friend and foe, for IFF tests) It came time to do the atmosphere things and they decided to be efficient and reuse many of the behavioral subroutines from the enemy infantry for the ground critters (like herds of kangaroos instead of platoons of infantry; enemy becuase kangaroos wouldn't most likely stand and wave at a helicopter like Australian troops would).
This worked very well, mostly. The kangaroos would scatter and try to run away from the helicopter as soon as they heard it, hiding behind trees, hills, and in valleys, etc.
Unfortunately, the code reused also modeled the "pop out from behind cover and fire shoulder-launched AA missiles at helicopter" behavior, a fact no one noticed until the first air crew was lost due to the KLA (Kangaroo Liberation Army, as the bug manifestation apparently became known as).
Oops.
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Training should be like bloodless battles, and battles should be like bloody training.
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Well, that's sort of the point isn't it. Learn to take control of the situation. Learn to deal with civilians...
It's just like CHIMPOKOMON! We must fly the fighters to destroy the American base to acheive master chimpokomon status!
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Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
In 94 I was playing Falcon 3.0 multiplayer 3D flight simulator on a 486. It may not have had every little thing that the military had, but it was a 3D battle simulation on a PC, with attention paid to how a real airplane handled (the manual was not for the faint of heart).
For those of you who have not heard of Falcon, it was the first "good" military flight sim. Had awacs sending you on missions to go out wack a few military targets (tanks, bridges, other airplanes, etc.), escort mission, etc. It was super advanced for it's time, I can't remember on how many floppies the damn thing came on though (too damn many). I must say it was pretty cool (maybe in a twisted way) zooming in and watching people running from your missile, headed for their SAM site.
Stupidity- Where some guy accidentally sets up a claymore pointing at his platoon.
Fear- Where someone in the platoon decides, "Screw this! This isn't worth dying for.", and bails out or hides in the woods.
Insanity- Where someone in the platoon goes bonkers and decides to start killing his own people or wants to extract revenge on a certain platoon member or officer.
SNAFU- Equipment failure.
Equipment competence-Just because you can control a simulated piece of equipment doesn't mean that you can handle the real thing (i.e. recoil)
You can be pretty fearless when all you have to do is poke a "Play Again?" button if something goes wrong.
One of the reasons I mention equipment is that we've got one guy who can polish the floor with our butts in Quake. We all went to play paintball (a 1st for everyone), and Quake-boy ended up getting drenched with about 3 coats. And he's in pretty good physical shape too.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
as quoted from the article:
"Of course, video and computer games are the closest most people come to experiencing situations like that. In fact, Dr. Silverman said one of his students had recently asked him why he even bothered with his research when there are games like Age of Empires, Microsoft's popular warfare strategy series."
I don't know about you, but I know I'D feel safer knowing our armed forces were training antiquated home pc stratagy sims.
RA7
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"Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" - RWE
What this reminds me of the the no-win simulation from Star Trek where the computer throws everything at you to see how you react, and it can react back at the decisions you make. You're guaranteed to fail (unless, or course, you figure out how to rig the simulation :-) but everyone gets to see how you will react in a panic situation.
Right now, they say that there are only a few possible "paths" that can be taken, but I'm sure that will increase as the technology gets refined.
Why do I keep thinking of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game? Simulation has a dark side to it...
Similar systems are already in use in the Canadian military - the application that I've heard of is a training system for naval boarding parties that enforce UN embargoes. I've got a buddy who has gone through the system; basically you stand in one spot with an electronic "gun" while various scenarios are displayed on a projection screen in front of you. The scenarios are all live action; like in the article, the scenario anticipates two or three possible outcomes and displays the results based on what you do (hold your fire? shoot at the wrong target? miss? etc.). The intention seems to be to illustrate the consequences of deadly force in a hostile but ambiguous situation, where your life is threatened but it's deliberately misleading which of the characters in the scenario represents the actual danger.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
A good place to learn about military simulation is at the Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation Command web site.
Anyone seriously interested in this should also research DIS (Distributed Interactive Simulation) and HLA (High Level Architecture [for simulation]).
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.