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US Military Ramps Up Stinky VR Training
HarrisonSilp writes "CNN.com has a story regarding the U.S. Military's recent foray into using Virtual Reality as a training method. Being developed by Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), they call it Mission Rehearsal Exercise or MRE for short, and it is a most impressive setup. 'The 5-minute scenario is projected onto a 150-degree movie screen, complete with 10.2-channel audio that creates floor-shaking sound effects. To enhance the sense of reality, smells including burned charcoal can be pumped into the room.' It almost makes me want to write off college and join the army..."
Metal Gear Solid 2, except for real...or is it? Where's those pesky Patriots to confirm or deny this!
v2sw7CUPhw5ln6pr5Pck4ma7u7LFw0m6g/l7Di5e6t5Ab6TH.
When I was in the Marine Corps, MRE stood for Meal Ready to Eat. These were the most horrible of things I was subjected to, other then the "Big Green Weenie" that is.
Simulations have been a large part of Military development for a LONG time; almost since we had computers. I used to go to a school which was next to a longstanding military research post for virtual reality installations. When I left, they where working on a way to make a compact way to distribute the tank simulation data to multiple systems for networking.
Mostly they focus on the visual data in all of the simulations because it helps the most. This is an interesting new thing, but its really only an incremental improvement, considering how advanced the military simulations already are.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
So, usually, when things are measured in a fixed number of minutes, they aren't really simulations. They are movies. Maybe they're really good movies, with the IMAX-style screen, and Smellovision, but they aren't "VR."
What if you don't "secure the assembly area" within your alotted five minutes? Do you have to pay for another ticket? Sorry, your five minutes are up. Please put all trash in the designated recepticles on the way to the exits.
'Army of One' is referring more and more to the average IQ of new recruits, not the sense of fellowship. (This isn't an attack at the military, just an observation about the people I know who have signed up in the last 2 years.)
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Try some psilocybin mushrooms. Yummy!
They go great with weed too.
Those idiots can just download a DOOM wad that turns all the monsters into Barney the Purple Dinosaur! They'll be killing machines in no time!
is actually much cheaper than all this equipment.
It costs about $5 a hit, and comes on blotter paper.
So why bother with all these fancy electronics when LSD, one of the wonders of chemistry, works better?
"It can't replace any real training," says Omer. "But what it does do is allow the military to prepare and rehearse before they get into any situation."
And boot camp is for...?
Combat training is for...?
SEAL, Munitions, Howitzer, Tank and Sharpshooter training is for...?
This dude deserves a "DUH!" award, if there was one.
Remember those lines from G.I. Jane:
Nurse: "Why are you doing this?"
Jane: "Do you ask that of all the men?"
N: "Yes"
J: "And what do they answer?"
N: "I get to blow shit up."
Hell, Rogue Spear and Q3 mods provide enough realism...just add it to the VR and several "pressure cuffs" and "shock suits" to simulate damage.
Oh, well, I suppose every little bit helps.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Yet another example of "we built this cool toy but have no idea about what to do with it."
The annoucement at http://www.isi.edu/uarc.html lists a couple dozen news sites that have covered this announcement.
If you're interested in the AI type stuff behind virtual/synthetic elements that would go along with this sort of thing, check out some SOAR/ASTT documents.
just get the soliders play metal gear solid one and two a couple thoudand times till they think they are snake. then we will have a army of super soliders able to take on 50 feet nuclear armed dinosaur looking things. think the future. think snake.
Me and lunchbox here are going to kick your ass.
The military has been using virtual reality in some form or another since the late 80's... This is nothing more than yet another graphical upgrade. It should surprise nobody.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Now that the hype from the World Trade Center "lets go kill some terrorists" hype is dying down, the military returns to researching new recruitment techniques. We find our greatest influx comming from gamers, and we intend to demonstrate that the military is the ultimate experience. In other news, the Air Force is assisting in the development of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2005 to include some of the newest aircraft in order to give, "product placement and early training," to future recruits.
I say, stay in school.
You're about as likely to see this system in your time in, as you are to get struck by lightning AND win the lottery.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
While this may be an interesting new technology, or cool new advances on older technology, I have to wonder why we need this so badly. I mean, really... The Army is always getting fancy new toys like this which cost millions of dollars, yet the Marine Corp still manages to do better with the leftovers they inherited from the Army after Vietnam. Can someone explain why we really need to waste "more than $45 million... between 2000 and 2005." on these new toys?
i know millions of game fans out there. Are playing counter strike or tacops religiously online everyday. could playing a fps like cs or tacops be like vr training?
Me and lunchbox here are going to kick your ass.
The military has been using virtual reality for years now, just not exactly in this form...
I'm talking about flight simulators. They perfectly model the inside of a cockpit, hook the thing up to hydraulics and have an entire room full of minicomputers to drive the simulation with SGI Onyx machines for modeling the landscape and entities. The scenery is provided by 8 projectors which display the surroundings on a curved reflective screen just outside cockpit windows.
These multi-million dollar machines are quite impressive definitely a lot more fun than X-Plane. Machines at separate military bases can even be linked up together for the ultimate multiplayer flight sim.
Getting to check one of these out has definitely been one of the highlights of my life as a geek. I decided that being a systems programmer / maintainer or developer for flight simulator could be a very entertaining use of my future career. I already have the avionics background, I would just need the CS degree and maybe a class or two at Embry-Riddle...
That's lame. I experienced the smell of burned charcoal yesterday; it was the savory aroma of my Thanksgiving turkey cooking on the Weber grill. It gave me a nice warm fuzzy feeling.
If they really want to do combat simulation, they need to pump in the smell of cordite and napalm; the smell of rotting flesh on week-old corpses; the smell of truckfulls of men who haven't changed their clothes in five weeks; the smell of raw sewage and mud at the bottoms of trenches; the smell of mustard gas and burning tires; the smell of fear.
If they had this kind of realism, you'd stay safely in college.
It almost makes me want to write off college and join the army...
Only if I get to keep the 150 degree screen and 10.2 system...
SIGFEH
It would be better to give the military guys paintball guns and let them reherse marine tactics on each other
Then give them a REAL virtual reality combat sim, not some fancy looking movie
I'm sorry but i looked at the picture and it looked like virtual cop 2 with a special movie screen
Ok maybe the screen is nice and its a decent similator, but tell me how do a group of soldiers actualy interact with it if its just a screen? At least if you wear a body suit and goggles you interact with it with your body so its actually realistic.
I dont know about this
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
If the media says the Columbine kids learned from doom, Why cant our military? Afterall Doom isnt just a game, Its training for teenage psycho murderers!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Soldiers continue to live in shitty housing, with hardly any benefits, and get paid like crap while counted on to sacrifice their lives.
Yet another Army idea due for the scrapper after countless $$$ is spent. Remember how much they spent on Land Warrior before they canceled that?
MRE? The military already has that acronym for Meals Ready to Eat. Kinda the similar though... MREs are virtual food.
Sure, this may SOUND good, but if you've ever seen a show that had a military airplane or tank simulator in it (or if you've been to one) you'd notice the lack of any kind of decent graphics. While this new simulator sounds incredible, I'm wondering just how much it's lacking in that concern. I mean, they shell out billions of dollars on these things and they can't even install a copy of *shudder* Microsoft Flight Simulator (or some reasonably modified facimile)?
[insert witty comment here]
I had given up on seeing this happen, as technology seemed to pass it by. But now it looks like Niven's work still holds water. And he pinpointed the military application.
Too bad Dream Park is out of print and hard to find. It's not on par with True Names, but is interesting from a 'how they saw it' viewpoint.
Any type of VR the army has was built by the lowest bidder, made with the least expensive parts and is sure to be 100% crap. When I was in, we had some motion platforms designed to teach you to drive the M1A1 tank. They were too floaty, geometrically incorrect, didn't have enough cool animations for falling off of cliffs and they wouldn't let you run over any trees. (in the simulation, you'd "die". In real life, you go through 3 foot thick trees like buttah) There is no substitution for actual live training. The army will never get VR right, they even screwed up applesauce.
Military := commanded murder
Military := commanded killings
Military := commanded destruction
Military := waste of money
Military := suppresion of the weak
Do yourself a favour and buy the best gaming machine around with e.g. one or more Projectors.
Setup yourself a multimedia gaming-room.
There you can kill, destroy and murder as many people as you want in virtual reality and you won't harm any (mostly) innocent folks, destroy their property and oppress them for personal interests of some rich american assholes.
As a swiss guy i'm forced myself to train every second year in military. It's just the uttermost plain stupid union possible. The higher the rank of these folks the more ruthless and egoistic they get. Just a dumb waste of money !
Your's
Beeblebrox
MRE also stands for "meal ready to eat", ie, field rations. Now they want to call this training Mission Rehearsal Exercise...
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
"Virtually Identical"
I thought reality was something with which you could interact. Even a virtual reality must have some sort of I/O or it's just a movie, no matter how many gimmicks are thrown in. Smoke and mirrors may prepare soldiers for some of the confusion of being in combat, but the ability to think on one's feet and react to a rapidly changing scenario won't come from looking at a movie screen.
Although I could see where people might get confused, especially with the smell of charcoal being pumped into the room.
(Incidentally, I've had MREs (the "edible" variety), and I actually don't think they're that bad, although that might be because I only had mess hall food for comparison at that point. ;) )
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
koopa castle was nuked by the us air force last night. says george bush "we must take bowser, dead or alive".
update comments set karma=-1, reason='offtopic' where sid=26315
Unfortunately, the Army is still of the mindset that quantity is better than quality and has repeatedly lowered standards to pump up the numbers. Intelligence/Education is just one of the many victims of this mindset. This, at a time when the tasks of the average soldier are becoming increasingly more complex, both technologically and politically. Soldiers can no longer just be considered automotons that mindlessly follow orders... they have to be aware of the ramifications their actions can have. IE: How does a soldier fix the wireless networks of a group of tanks when his MOS is for radio communications? How does a soldier respond when confronted by the media? I hope the Army learns quickly, but history indicates otherwise.
Humorless sig goes here.
So you don't think your country should be able to protect itself from invasion?!
I don't know why societies bother with cowards and slackers like you.
In Finland the "conscientious" objectors aren't jailed like they should (preferably until they agree to go and serve their country). Instead they get to do light civil service for 13 months and still they whine about how unfairly they're being treated. You see, the obligatory military service can be as short as six months...
Now, if someone won't give a measly six months (or 12 in your case) of their lives to pay back the debt of honor to their fatherland (which gave them everything!) then in my opinion they don't deserve the citizenship.
With the average slashdotter's waist size? Fat camp is more likely.
WTF the fuck is that supposed to be? 5.1 is 5 channels plus 100Hz right? So, is 10.2 10 channels plus 200HZ or is someone just escalating numbers to impress teenagers again? This is the dumbest crap I've ever heard of.
That was classic intercourse!
...enhance the sense of reality, smells including burned charcoal can be pumped into the room.' It almost makes me want to write off college and join the army...
Yeah, you do that. You'll probably end up as telecom guy or something like that, taken into account that you probably study something computer related. My guess is that you would never set your foot near any of these simulators.
Also, reading the article you get the impression it's mostly used as a tool in training commanding officers in decision making. Not the "regular" FPS you probably was hoping to play.
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
The difference, hopefully, would be that
it will NOT be fun to play. If it is
preparatory it should be very stressful
require quick shifts from action to
thinking and back. And it should smell
like an abattoir to the point of
nausia and whatever pheromone humans
produce when terrified. That type of
sensory onslaught may improve reaction
times. They might also want to alternate
the subjects activities before the
simulation, like karate practice, then
after reveille next, then after taking
a written exam and then after coming
back from leave. Of course I'm saying
this while sitting in my pajamas, in a nice
warm house drink delicious steaming
coffee, so..........maybe thats objectivity?
"Virtual Reality" simply means artifically making something seem, well, real.
When applied to a combat situation, this can mean making the body smell, see, and hear things that they would encounter in combat, to prepare their senses for the real thing.
"VR" does not mean "Computer-generated imagery & feelings hacked directly into your brainstem", nor does it have to mean "3d generated graphics with stereoscopic vision and a powerglove".
Even though said soldier obviously KNOWS it's not real, the assault on his senses goes a long way to preparing him for the real thing. That's the point.
If blood doesnt spray from the screen when your VR buddy gets shot in the neck.. I ain't interested.
How is this off topic?
/. crowd that intelligent moderation is reflected on intelligent posting and the new game seems to be modding by subjet/name
Did you even read before modding, sheesh!?
Did you even read my posting? Didja *see* the inclusion of text direct from the fucking article?
Obviously not. Because someone with an IQ above 50 would have read more than the subject line.
And, if whoever modded this down, obviously missed this:
But several online game reviews of "Real War" have criticized it for not being realistic enough, calling the movements jerky and cartoonish.
Which, if you have a sense of humor at all, will see that the paragraph below has direct linking to the paragraph above.
And in other news, Mr. Omer's next sim will be called "Real Congress", and get rave reviews for its accurate depiction.
Oh, well, not to worry. My other account hit the karma cap quite quickly, thank you.
Proving to me, and anyone else in the
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
SLASHDOT:
From the demographics I once saw on the OSDN Website, it looks like the readers of slashdot are the type of people who are well-off, white, and fairly unlikely to ever experience war except through Quake, CNN, or Neal Stevenson Novels. Why are there always military articles posted on Slashdot?
Nerds and geeks will forever be the whimpering lapdogs that build the technology for killing! Racial military minority representation has risen from 14 percent in 1975 to 26 percent. This is faster than the rate that African Americans and Latinos have attained Internet access! Slashdot readers are smart, when will the poseur editors get over their military wanna-be aspirations?
The problem with all these VR machines is that there is no danger involved. The movie screen does not shoot back and nobody can die or get hurt from your reactions. When the soldiers get into real life and the enemy is shooting back at them it will be a whole different game and they will flip out. We need more money spent not on complex computer driven interactive movies but on live fire excerises.
It almost makes me want to write off college and join the army...
So I want to understand this. You prefer to experience life through an interface to a localized digital sub-reality where you kill and destroy like a trained machine instead of breathing and eating here with us in meatspace where the blood, disease, and destruction come complete with a real olifactory track that would turn a decent being's stomach?
Philip K. Dick must be rolling over in his grave......
Please think about what you are saying. Even if it is said in jest, this kind of eager-beaver jingoism should be known and despised for what it is: abject worship of a system that actively promotes the death of your fellow human beings, "enemy" or not. If you don't value life, that's fine, but keep your adolescent, cold-blooded thoughts to your self.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
Yes folks, this is the new mode of warfare: spin control.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
....perfect the simulated Hookers In Every Port. Geeks are too afraid to touch real girls.
Table-ized A.I.
that should be "hookers at every port", not "hookers in every port". After all, were not talking Tailand here....snicker.
Table-ized A.I.
You have to choke one down to understand ...
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
I have worked on these flight sims for a living, testing them and helping develop them. I've logged around a hundred hours of flight time in A-4J, T-45, AV-8B, and S-3B sims, as well as F-18, F-14, S-3, T-45 and other development or test sims. I can state with absolute certainty that getting paid to play these video games was the coolest part of my job.
Because I have this experience, I'd like to throw in a few considerations to this discussion.
The military pays LOTS of money to get these simulators as close to reality as possible. I know - my job was to verify that they fly just like the airplane. We would spend a week or more flying a sim in every conceivable situation, and comparing the results to real airplane data. But in the end, there were usually several significant areas where the sims just don't stack up. You cannot ever get a sim as good as the airplane, for a number of fundamental reasons, not the least of which is the lack of true G-forces.
In the end, the utility of ANY sim is determined mostly by understanding exactly where it is "mission representative" - where the model is representative of the actual mission the sim must model. Then, you carefully develop a syllabus, or training regime, that sidesteps those areas where the sim is not accurate. In some cases, this means not training certain tasks at all. In other cases, it means not using a sim in certain parts of the operating "envelope" while performing certain tasks.
Why is this important? Because it points out a key fact of simulation, not just flight simulation. Every simulation has its weaknesses. This does NOT mean the simulation is not useful - it simply means that you MUST understand those areas, and account for them while training. It is possible - and in fact done by the military - to take an individual with no actual experience in a certain type of airplane, spend two weeks training them in the simulator, then give them exactly two flights in the REAL airplane, before certifying them to solo in that airplane, and in fact start performing missions (not combat, of course, but that doesn't take long either).
Sims are tremendously useful. You can do things you'd never risk in real life, and do them over and over again until the reaction is automatic. You can do boring stuff, and do it many times. You can do things much faster - because you don't have to march, or drive, or fly to the operating area. And best of all, you can do it cheaply.
Sims are here to stay in the military. The most significant change in military procurement policy we're likely to see, worldwide, is the emphasis on interconnected simulations of all kinds for military-wide war gaming. We'll have better trained troops at all levels, at a lower cost than ever before.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Boy are you misguided and stupid, if you'd join the army just to play video games. You're sure going be in for a lot of unpleasant surprises. Take my advice, kiddo: stay at home and continue to live with your parents, if you just want to play video games.
What a sickening, foolish thing to say: "It almost makes me want to write off college and join the army..."