P2P Goes To War

lostdogfound writes "OpenP2P.com has an interview with Michael Macedonia, the chief scientist and technical director of the U.S. Army's training facility known as STRICOM, who says peer-to-peer technology could help the military build less expensive and more effective training simulations. It sounds like a holodeck sort of environment, and he hints that some major theme parks are interested in the technology."

Comments

The Army Groks Simulation

[DG]

I've had opportunity to train in the Close Combat Tactical Trainer at Ft Knox, and it's one of the best things I ever encountered in my military career.

When you train live, in the real world, there's really no good way to tell who killed who. I've seen exercises with millions of dollars of equipment and dozens of highly trained, professional soldiers degenerate into a game of "I shot you first!"

In the simulators, you get to actually employ the weapons against targets, and work with the results. Make a mistake, and you get killed. Get killed a few times, and you start learning.

And besides, it's a kick-ass game. :) Beats Q3 down cold.

Even as rough and clunky as the system was around the edges, it was still the best training I ever had. My biggest regret was that we didn't have one at the home unit - if we did, I'd've had the boys spend hours in it every day, practicing, and getting better and better at the job.

Simulation is the next big military advantage, and the Army has really grabbed ahold of the idea. Watch for some cool stuff to come out of this space.

Re:The Army Groks Simulation

[Alien54]

Although I noticed this bit:

The Army's now going to something called Army Knowledge Online, and they're centralizing the funding for computers, networking and MIS management. They're not necessarily centralizing the operation, I think that'll be the next step. They're trying to come up with an AOL-like model for the Army, for computing.

I don't know, but this seems like trouble to me.

:)

- - -
Radio Free Nation
an alternate news site based on Slash Code

Re:The Army Groks Simulation

[Coz]

Ha HA!

I actually worked on that puppy! Rough and clunky it may be, but remember, it's a DoD procurement :> - we did the best we could with what we had at the time. Hundreds of thousands of lines of Ada - yes, Ada... and it's still one of the best things I've ever worked on.

We used to play in 'em - "test" sessions where we'd do all kinds of strange stuff to try to crash the simulators or the CGF (computer-generated forces, everything that moved that didn't have a person behind it). We joked that if the budget fell short, we could roll up the high-bay doors and charge folks $15 for 10 minutes. You'd need to come as a crew - it takes 4 to run an Abrams (ok, 2 can do it in the sim, but the person in the turret running the gun and sights is gonna get bruised on the equipment).

Wow. CCTT on Slashdot. My career is validated ;-)

Re:The Army Groks Simulation

[Tackhead]

> I've had opportunity to train in the Close Combat Tactical Trainer at Ft Knox, and it's one of the best things I ever encountered in my military career.

To the extent that you feel comfortable discussing it (uh, and to the extent you feel comfortable downloading a 64M demo ;) how did the guys at Operation Flashpoint do?

The reason I ask is that for the past few years, I've been itching for an FPS game that does a reasonable simulation of the foot soldier's experience. I think these guys are close, but I have nothing to compare it against. (And as a civilian, I'm grateful to you .mil folks, past and present, for that lack of experience!)

All I know is that when I tried the demo, I had a wonderfully-intense feeling of "Oh crap, stick near the rest of the guys around my CO who look like they know where they're going, and try not to get shot in the process!", which seems to my untrained mind like a major step in the right direction over the Quake and Half-Life mod scene...

p2p reclassified as munitions!!!!

[Unknown Poltroon]

All gnutella users are herby ordered to stop or risk violating national security.

politics, etc

[Alien54]

So while the P2P technology gets the support of the Military, while the RIAA, etc goes after it because of their paranoia.

Maybe national security will trump corporate interests after all.

or will folks get discounts on their weapon purchases?

[smile]

- - -
Radio Free Nation
an alternate news site based on Slash Code

History of Military Simulators

[hillct]

The military has had a rich history of network based simulations. Since the dawn of real networking (with decent bandwidth) there have been military simulators, the first of which were of Naval battle. The navy sunk billions into such projects in the early 1980s, connecting unitssimulating various American, Brittish and French vessels (including submarines), as well as computer generated russian vessels which had all the unique characteristics of each. Durring that period of the Cold War, the navy has some of the most advanced network based simulations available. The technology discussed in the article isn't really that new. Granted, now we have a lot more bandwidth and processing power. You have to admire the systems built in those days specifically because of the accomplishments made dispite these limitations.

--CTH

Sun Tzu said it best...

[mellifluous]

The ultimate deployment is formless.

If you cannot analyze your opponent's organization, then you cannot fight it. This is especially apropos in the digital battlefield, where a P2P network minimizes the dependence on any one node.

OT: P2P resources

[PureFiction]

The emerging P2P scene is still pretty interesting. For the curious there are a few good resources out there for the latest info on peer networks in general:

www.infoanarchy.org

www.peertal.com

Decentralization mailing list

P2P-hackers mailing list

SAT Range?

[Usquebaugh]

This sounds very much like the 'Small Arms Training' range.

I've been in the process of setting one of these up in my living room :-) Well ok maybe a simplified version. It's no where near complete yet http://home.pacbell.net/ajmoir/LightGun.htm

It also helps that the old American Laser Games, MadDog McCree etc are soon to be released on DVD :-) http://www.digitalleisure.com/pr010517.html

If you like the idea of playing these sort of games then drop me a line.

Actually, it does not

[supabeast!]

"...it sounds like a holodeck sort of environment..."

What the article describes is a head mounted display connected to a powerful 3D engine. In the long run, the same thing could be done with a nice virtual reality helmet and a Quake Mod.

Not just desensitization

[sconeu]

The Marine Corps at one point used a customized version of DOOM for training... wish I could remember the URL!

Now to more serious stuff...

STRICOM is the Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation Command. They are heavily into distributed simulation (especially DIS and HLA).

I recall that at one point they ran some exercise (I think it was REFORGER, but I could be wrong) completely simulated, involving units from all over the world. This was back in the '95-'96 time frame.

Also, simulation isn't just for desensitization. It's mainly used for vehicle simulations. Remember, those planes/tanks/whatevers ain't cheap! Not to mention the ability to train soldiers under battle conditions without risk to their lives.

Another optical solution?

[cr0sh]

This would work - but a good hi-res projector is going to be expensive (it possible to build a cheap video projector though, I guess). If you are real serious about this though, price won't be an issue.

You mentioned on your site that you didn't like an all optical system, but you didn't give much in the way of detail why. You mentioned refresh rates and such, so I imagine you are talking about the scanline based systems for determining where you shot at.

Here is another possibility - optical as well, though:

The gun is optical, has a lens to focus the light from the monitor/crt onto a phototransistor. When the trigger is pulled, all the targets can flicker at different frequencies, alternating between the normal image and an all-white image. The phototransistor would pick up which one you are aiming at based on brightness and frequency.

At least, it is a theory. Probably wouldn't work great, though. Using a laser pointer is good, but the projector portion is going to be the bad part (expen$ive)...

Re:Desensitization

[JatTDB]

I got the same thing with looking for optimum grappling hook travel paths when Quake 2 was big...

Look on the bright side...if you ever have to defend your home against criminals/terrorists/thought police/girl scouts/whatever, the little bonus of some strategic thinking just might save your life. Thinking like a soldier doesn't have to be a bad thing, as long as you don't act on it without reason.

Another SIMNET/DoD Simulation alumnus

[mr_death]

I was one of the original SIMNET developers at BBN in the 80s. One of the problems we had at that time was scalibility -- we used broadcast ethernet to relay vehicle state to all other vehicles. As you might imagine, this doesn't work very well once you get up to 500 or so vehicles.

HLA uses a single or multi-server architecture, which allows entities to "sign up" for objects and event they find interesting. Each entity can also be a server, which might be the way to make the P2P part work.

From the article...

[megaduck]

One of the big things that's coming out today, or the last two years, has been EverQuest, which is a 3-D virtual reality game. There's other ones called Asheron's Call and Altima Online.

Altima Online!

Drive your Nissan Altima around in a virtual world populated with thousands of boring commuter automobiles! Avoid parking tickets! Quest for cheap gasoline! Rack up mileage! Altima Online, coming soon to a PC near you.

Re:question:

[ROBOKATZ]

Yes. The article was ridiculous buzzword hype.

To use a popular example, take a game of StarCraft. There is no central game server, or "simulation authority" -- the game is distributed over all the player's machines, with tokens passed in a ring containing player commands for that timeframe. So, yes, it's "P2P" but BIG FUCKING DEAL. This is nothing new, people.

They can't outspend Microsoft?

[Ecyrd]

Microsoft will spend 2 billion dollars on the XBox... The entire Army budget for research and development this year is $1.6 billion. So Microsoft is spending more money on a game console than the Army is spending on basic and applied research. So we're in a dilemma here. We can't outspend Microsoft.

Doesn't anyone else think this is scary?

An alternative to war?

[DrCode]

If it's that much fun, perhaps countries could use simulators instead of having real battles. Seems like a lot of wars are about culture, religion, or just egos. In other words, they're not about anything physical.

So set the leaders and top military commanders up with one of these 'games'. If it's fun enough, they'll get so engrossed that they'll forget what they were fighting about.

Re:An alternative to war?

[Moofie]

Which wars are those? I'm curious for your viewpoint...all the wars I America has been involved in were a) in response to direct threats to national soverignty (and, yes, in the 50's and 60's the expansion of communism was percieved as such a threat) or b) treaty obligations.