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

Re:Acronym conflict?

[The_Messenger]

Years ago, I used to work as a geek lackey at a well-known [civilian] military news service. Our buddies at Naval command hooked us up with a big, thick book filled with hundreds of thousands of miliary acronyms. If you think that the technolgy industry overuses acronyms, you'd get a kick out of this book -- deciphering acronyms made of acronyms made of acronyms will often leave you doubting the sanity of the government. (Of course, if you weren't doubting it already, I doubt your sanity.)

The military and the defense industry also have some wonderful jargon. My favorite example, often seen in sales brochures, is "ruggedized." A "ruggedized" object is an object which has been made rugged.

Anyway, I can guarantee that MRE already stands for at least ten other things, probably only half of which are common among all four major branches. The public is only most aware of the "Meal Ready to Eat" definition because of the publicity that that particular crap received during Desert Storm.