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..."

Comments

Doh! Missed the last line...

[A_Non_Moose]

"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.

Re:Doh! Missed the last line...

[The_Messenger]

The problem is that most of these "simulations" are crap. Simulating a ground war, especially in an urban environment with a civilian population, is impossible given today's technology. The results merely test whether you've memorized protocol.

Flight simulation is successful because the cockpit is a limited environment anyway; you have a set of controls, a restricted viewing area, and a relatively low number of possible situational variables. The stress of real conflict will still be missing, but you don't have to worry about the enemy ducking into a building, or having to carry a wounded squad member, or having your overtaxed weapon seize. But even flight simulation often degenerates into a protocol exam, because pilots are so highly-trained to begin with that much of what they practice in simulation has already been learned in the classroom and in the cockpit.

But I digress. My point is that if simulation cannot accurately simulate, it doesn't matter if it's less costly. Real excercises, while not perfect, are always more realistic, and if your soldiers are 1% more prepared for The Real Thing than the investment is justified.

In response to lagging enrollment

[Scouras]

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.

flight sims

[Eil]

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...

Smells

[Waffle Iron]

'...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...

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.

This seems like a waste of time

[HanzoSan]

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

"VR" in the army

[Sabot7723]

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.