Slashdot Mirror
Army to use MMOG for Simulation Training
Anonymous Coward writes "Military Training Technology (online edition) has an interesting article, 'The End Game', containing revelations about a Research, Development and Engineering Command project 'that is as timely as the nightly news' - a Massively Multiplayer Simulation for Asymmetric Warfare, or simply MMP: 'essentially a virtual world [developed by There Inc.] intended to train soldiers well beyond the goals of war gaming'."
"Man, this army thing is fun!"
Is that a reference to Ender's Game?
Well, on one hand, this might be a really good idea: train people to think in new ways, provoke discussion and innovation, and generally have a place for people to make their dumb mistakes before they go out into the field.
On the other hand, let's not forget one of the big dangers of simulator training is that people often get very attuned to artefacts in the simulator, and then in the real world get their ass handed to them.
Great if it works. But if it turns out more over-enthusiastic rookies with unrealistic simulator expectations, people are going to get killed.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
With America's Army, and now this, it seems the US millitary are tying to save money by having people train themselves.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
HEY sarge! NO camping you cheap bastard!
From the article:
So those many, many hours I've spent on Doom, Quake, Quake2, Quake3, etc... can help make me a worthwhile soldier?
Hmm... having served in the military, I suppose it may be true.
The concepts of good cover, working as a team, knowing what your weapon can/can't do...
It makes sense. Aircraft pilots learn in a simulator, why not soldiers?
Maybe this is why my friends and I are good at paintball... cover me... go, go, go!
There addicts have known about this for months.
There's no quad-damage in the real world... bummer.
USArmy is brainwashing youth to become a soldier. Same thing with America's Army the game, but this will be on a much more massive level if they let civilians use this. There 0wns!
great, now we're gonna have every geek/nerd/whatever (i forgot the difference) signing up for the us military. the gamers corps
somewhere, on a Big Red Sign:
if(color==blue){speed--;}
Asymmetric Warfare? Is that what you call it when America attacks another country? It's not like anybody can hang with our military. Not that I'm proud of that fact (in fact, I'm not proud of it at all). In the long run it's not a very nice way to treat your neighbors ;0
But at least they're using simulation rather than killing real foreigners!
Ask me about The Shocker!
I've always wondered why the army didnt use RTS-like interfaces to control their troops in things like the iraq war. Select the units, choose the formation, right click on the target whatever.
Liberty.
/petition Your platoon KS'd my Saddam!
When I play Couter-Strike, or BattleField, I don't care if I die. I just spawn back in next round. I may try to take the game "seriously" for about 5 minutes, but then I just go komikaze into the field running and spraying. What happens when soilders don't take their lives seriously after battle "simulation" for 6 weeks straight? It goes the same for me when I play paintball... it's all serious, until I try and rambo it up a notch and end up with a new multi-colored ass. It's something for phsyciatric stundy, imho.
You talk better than you fool!
It takes all the fun out of a friendly-fire incident if your sergeant can just respawn.
I'm to understand that in the initial simulations, the North Koreans totally overran the United States and emerged victorious -- not through the use of nukes but through millions of zerglings. The Prime Minister of North Korea had this to say:
"ZERG RUSH kekekekeke ^______^"
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I was in the Army, and I don't know if this type of simulation is being targeted at the right place.
From the story, it seemed like this was going to be a vertical solution- from the top, all the way down to the individual soldier.
I don't think that anyone below an E-7 (Platoon Sgt) would benefit from this type of training. Below that level, and you are really dealing with more of a human aspect, not tactical. The typical private is going to have more personal issues confronting a hostile crowd, than tactical. Someone else will be there to tell his dumb ass what to do- the question is, can he actual do it- and are his balls big enough.
Contrary to all the dick swinging here on Slashdot- your balls don't get bigger while sitting in front of a computer- they get bigger by experiencing real-world confrontation.
Later on- this might be of use- but one thing a typical soldier has a lot of, is time. Train them like crazy, to prepare for the real world.
No reason to lie.
It would be interesting to see some of the work that the Project Albert people have done moved into an immersive space like this. Project Albert is focused on running simple agent-based simulations over and over (1-1000000x) to examine emergent behaviors in particular situations.
sorry, should have put this in the other post, but there's also ARTT - above real time training, where you run the sim 30% faster, people's reflexes speed up, and then in the real world they often have a 10% edge once they've reacclimatized to regular speed reality.
I really do worry about the simulator-shock aspect of this: both in terms of creating unrealistic expectations on the part of the soliders, but also in terms of people slipping into "gamespace" on the battle field.
ARRL (advanced robotics research limited) used to do a lot of VR work in Britain, and they wouldn't let people drive for about an hour or two after they'd been in the VR because people often drove in very odd ways, including being very agressive and taking foolish risks. They pinned it down to two things, if I remember correctly:
1> Simulator artefacts, as outlined in the other post.
2> The sense of "unreality" which pervaded the real world after having been inside for a while...
People didn't feel like the real world was real any more after even three hours in a VR system. Somehow the brain figures out "well, I can run into walls and I don't feel anything, I must be dreaming(?)" or something like that?
I don't know exactly, but stories like that give me a very, very bad feeling about extending the use of simulator based training even further. it might not be VR, but I won't be surprised if the problems are similar.
The psychological effects are so subtle, but potentially so important. I think we might do much, much better investing these resources in better real-world training for troops than sims.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Just cos the bad guys shop at PC World for their asymmetric sims, you have to come up with your own in-house version that's better... That's like those newbies complaining that the teams aren't even.
but I bet you're using the HL2 engine huh, huh?
Notice how a bunch of 12 year olds break bones because they think they can skateboard? I mean, they totally beat Tony Hawk in like, 2 days.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
Seriously though, I wonder if the fact that the government thinks video games are great tools for creating mindless violent automatons lends any weight to the naggy soccer moms claiming the same?
=)
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
war is easy, guided missiles ?, shock and awe, its all so easy when i just press a button on my screen and 1000's die i don't even have to think they are real people
a lot of war is already like a video game, and killing is so much easier when you don't have to look at your enemies face when you kill him and his family
I bet if it was going to be REALLY cool someone would steal the source code and ruin it for the rest of us...
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
.. that this thread would be slightly better than the similar thread on fark a day or two ago. sigh....
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
It will be interesting to see how our troops will deal with real world combat when they don't have the same Ikthar's Ring of Thorns that gives them +2 to all skills, 40% more likely to find magic item, and 130% damage. u got SSoJ?
It seems to me that this is the perfect opportunity to save a few of our taxpaying bucks and contract with a gaming company that has an existing game. Pay the coders to add a the necessary training features and you have saved a bunch of redundant work. Don't reinvent the wheel guys!
Bet this turns out to be largest price ever paid for a copy of battlefield 1942.
Ever see that movie?
I'm not so sure this is a great idea.
Firstly, I don't know of any guys on the pro golf circuit who got there because they're the man at sim golf. I doubt that I'd want someone who kicks butt at rollercoaster tycoon making amusement parks and rollcosters for public use. You get the idea.
Sure you have simulators which people use for training - but those are incredibly expensive incredibly specialized pieces of equipment. Real life pilots aren't using MS flight simulator to get their licenses. And this war game stuff sure doesn't sound like anything more than Everquest set in a modern day war zone.
Secondly, do we really need to be spending more public funding to reach an even larger audience to teach them the best way to kill people? Even if it's just the abstract virtual kind of killing with no "real" repercussions. I mean, if you want to be a soldier, go ahead and sign up, get the real training, see what it's like to actually have to wake up at 0500 and hit the obstacle course, fire off a few rounds, get disciplined, maybe even go off and have to be personally responsible for the death and maiming of a few other human beings because that's your job. Do we really need an MMORPG for this? Shouldn't we be spending this money on teaching people how NOT to kill each other, or adressing the issues that make it so people want to kill their fellow man in the first place? Then we might not need so many soldiers.
Sorry, that's just crazy talk - by all means it's a great idea to teach Johnny and Janie how to frag. That's invaluable job skill training that will benefit humanity. Heck in that case, why not make it a required course to graduate High School? Sponsored by the military-industrial complex near you.
My tax dollars at work indeed.
Hum... Quake ?
I sure wouldn't try a rocket jump in real life, would you ?
Iraq: war to save the U
American military superiority is now so huge that nobody in their right minds is going to face us on an open battle field without air superiority, which basically ain't going to happen.
So at that point, people are adapting rapidly and finding ways to attack american political will and infrastructure: in Iraq, that's putting GIs in body bags and blowing up oil facilities.
It's not clear to anybody that an organized, hierarchical military force is capable of victory against guerillas, even in a desert environment. Nobody's going to come out and say that, but it's implicit in the work of John Boyd, a fighter pilot and philosopher who is widely hailed as the father of the F16 and it's entire school of fighter design, and the Air-Ground War doctrine which is the bedrock of military strategy for the USA.
Boyd basically suggests that hierarchies are inherently a bottleneck on the battlefield, and that the time it takes information to percolate to the level a decision can be made on is a critical point of attack for fast, light, independent forces.
So if you have cohesion and collective planning, you have slowness and are vulnerable. But if you have no central control, then you're not an army, you're a rabble.
That's why there's so much of a focus on netwar and similar concepts in current US military thought: we're trying to figure out how to beat sheep farmers with RPGs.
You can read a lot of Boyd's though online: check out Google's pages Boyd's OODA loop for more info.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
does this mean we'll be seeing more dead soldiers before the hit the battlefield? soon, we'll be seeing bunkers filled with pasty military men hanging from the cieling with notes on their bunks saying:
"My character died, my life is worthless and pointless, goodbye world!"
Well, ultimately it depends on the situation... you'd be amazed what you might try when other people are trying very hard to kill you, and you them.
When do we get to play it?
Where one side has a huge advantage, usually the war is swift, people surrender, and all's well. Put 'em in a camp, feed them, send them home.
The first Gulf War broke those rules, because we massacred 150 - 300, 000 retreating troops.
But, in general, I'd rather our soliders were well equipt, capable, and used wisely, rather than being poorly equpt, careless and used for imperialist aggression.
A strong American military is why Hitler and Stalin didn't wind up ruling the world, and don't forget it. Yes, and idiot like Bush is a big problem, but don't let bad leaders convince you that american military power is a bad thing. It's what kept the world free, and don't ever let anybody tell you different.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
[developed by There Inc.]
I got into their Beta (I think everyone did) and never got the game installed because I refused to upgrade to the latest IE *and* make it my default browser.
Good to know that someone's doing something to counteract all this Open Source in Government nonsense...
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
You can sign up to be a beta tester!
The only way to win is not to play at all.
Perhaps this will gradually turn into a situation kinda like that one episode of Star Trek where they beam down to a planet that is fighting a simulated war with another planet.
i.e., if Osama or the French or whoever want to fight the US, they would just log in to the US Army's MMOG and do their fighting online, without actually killing anyone or blowing anything up.
Check out the Humvees in this simulation.
A lot of folks have been curious as to how There has managed to stay in business for so long, now we know that it's our tax dollars at work.
Twice in the past 50 years, the American people have defeated monsterous regimes: Hitler, and Stalin. Yes, the cold war never came to blows, but if we had not comitted to contain the USSR at any cost, they would have expanded out of all recogniction.
Staling murdered nearly three times as many people as Hitler, and Hitler murdered 22 million people, by the estimates of Rudy Rummel of the University of Hawaii, who's extensively studied mass murders in recent history. (search for Democide) on Google.
We didn't have the choice of "not playing" on either of those occasions, and the reason there are free people left is that we won those wars.
Don't knock it. American military strength is a good thing. It's just that our current leaders are imperialist assholes.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Just make them watch Existenz a couple times a week.
That oughta fix it.
This Like That - fun with words!
...they are using computers to simulate asymmetric warfare, they will never gain a decent grasp of what asymmetric warfare is, nor will they understand how to defeat it.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Sweet, what are the system specs and when can we download it? Hope they make it free like America's Army.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Yeah, and the simulator will only run on one type of processer, one operating system, with one kind of video card, and go down every Tuesday. Seriously people, There, Inc. has a lousy track record for compatability. There, Inc. has a deal with some computer manufacturers to build There compatable computers. There, Inc. makes a rather silly MMORPG (if it can even be called that) and I fail to see how they are qualified to make a war simulator.
www.wwiionline.com
for there training
http://www5.playnet.com/bv/wwiiol/movies.jsp
From the article: "'When necessary, the exercises will be password protected,' Grosse continued, indicating its seriousness." I think that's hilarious, I don't know why. He doesn't say 2048 bit RSA with AES, he doesn't say even that the game packets will be encrypted...just "password protected". THAT'S how serious it is.
Hey, this is great. Maybe this technology can be extended such that all wars are fought in the simulation, with people who are decided to be casualties simply going to their local disintegration booth to be killed. It would save a lot on property damage.
You know, until Captain Kirk comes along and destroys the main computer, teaching us the error of our ways...
--AC
Ya know, invite everyone to play. That way you can see tactics from all over the place. A lot of gamers are very good at "gaming the system" or "min/maxing." Pit the world at large against the Army in this sim (altho it should be anonymous, no one should no who's real Army who's a gamer). Of course, there's always the concern that someone else will take to heart the lessons being learned. But with the Army actually in control of the system, I would hope the benefits would outweigh the risks.
Oh great, just more technology that will help the imperialist American military kill more innocent civilians.
World War II Online already has an immersive world oriented towards shooting people with ballistics/armor resolution, interaction between ground sea and air units, and 3000+ people in a single game world (1940 NW Europe, the largest game world in existence). Would have been nice to see some of that $6 million thrown towards a working model.
Likely they are going to get better eye candy (which is important for immersion in infantry battles) but the vehicles are not going to be right without serious serious work. And forget about interacting with fast moving choppers and jets.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
please don't wet your panties
The movies are making our kids violent! Go after hollywood!!!
Wouldn't it be a cool idea,
as well as good practice for the troops,
if they could play against the average joe?
Perhaps have weekly games, 1 spawn per a game,
to prevent dumbasses from just going rambo,
in which the troops, using their machines, could play against anyone in the US with the proper program and computer setup.
It'd keep them on their toes, thats for sure.
It'd similate a half-hazard army, such as guerilla armys, or mobs. Plus, I'd love to be able to whip out my sniper rifle and pick off a few of them
Really, I think they have much easier ways of weeding out the pacifists (if there are any?).
In my opinion, these games act mostly as marketing tools to show how "fun" it is to be a soldier. In the end, one 'leet soldier will still have no trouble taking out 10 'leet gamers trained on these games.
(If the parent was meant to be sarcastic I apologize, at the time of my response it is modded Insightful)
http://www.themedianews.com/DAGGER/Head_Lines/Link %20Extras/coutts_bank_london_martwell.htm
more goodies on http://www.cloakanddagger.ca/
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
The "good guys" should get outfit with alienware machines while the enemies play on Russian-refurbished Apple II's.
I'm willing to bet if you do something stupid and die in the simulator "game"... you're gonna be pulled out, get your instructor to yell at you until your ears bleed, and then be doing pushups and "helped" pushups until you die.
For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, one form of "training" has you do pushups til you can't no more, then do pushups with someone helping you up with a towel around your toso.
If you really think they'll have a "click to respawn" feature either a) you're an idiot... or b) you're right and the army is dumber than I thought.. and I'm an idiot too.
I believe that it's closer to "Teamwork and Situational Awareness Though Video Games" Seriously, The army is already pretty darn good at training citizens into soldiers. Your premise is wrong because you presume that violence is the desired end result, when in reality, the desired end result is soldier safety combined with an end to hostilities.
If you saw a platoon of lanky, pale, acne ridden zombie-creatures with calculators and rifles, backed up by a division of equally pale, huge amorphous blobs sporting over-stretched tux shirts and heavy weaponry, bearing down on you and screetching "OMFG U R LIEK GONNA B SO PWNED BITCHIZ!!!".... wouldn't you be terrified out of your mind?
I know I would.
Maybe it was the frustration of salarymen who suddenly had to confront the horror of equal rights.
I don't care why it exist, only that it exists.
Yes, especially if they were on my side.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I play There, and Firebird is my default browser. Not all that difficult to make a shortcut that opens IE for the game.
Can't say much about the latest IE thing, it worked fine with what I had installed. If your IE is that old, you must be a thrill-seeker..
There, Inc. seems like a very strange choice to develop a fighting simulation - all you do in their existing game is dance and buy clothes...
For great justice.
...instead of blowing $32 million to develop a proprietary version?
No wonder we're running a half-trillion dollar deficit...
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
I play There, and Firebird is my default browser. Not all that difficult to make a shortcut that opens IE for the game.
Well, like I said (though not so clearly), the installation FAILED because I didn't have IE as my default browser and wouldn't change that setting. Perhaps you changed it for the purposes of installation and then changed it back, or they fixed this and didn't bother to tell me (I emailed them politely informing them that I would be unable to participate in the beta until they fixed this problem, and that I would appreciate a notification if/when they did get it resolved... they responded with a polite "not gonna happen").
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
This'll last about as long as it takes for the 82nd Airborne to get their butts kicked by a bunch of 12 year olds. Maybe that's why they're calling it Asymmetric Warfare...
--Just the place for a snark!
They were using a modified version of DOOM years ago for this... maybe they just need to go to a new level.
or maybe the doom 3 license is like... a million?
"I've been sent here on order to take out Santiago..."
Maybe they don't want the Army to consist of TKers, AWP campers, and flashbang spammers. Also, 90% of the soldiers would only be able to work in a combat zone laid out exactly like the de_dust map.
Or maybe you are trying to rationalize. You already have the military experience from your time in the military, I'd think that was a lot more useful than any time playing FPS games.
F*cked Company is reporting 40% layoffs happening at there.com.
Never saw that problem.
I did see a problem when installing on my laptop, because it didn't like my video adapter. Solution: hold down shift key while starting the program, to skip the compatibility step. Gotta love those undocumented, non-standard solutions...
According to f*edcompany.com, There Inc. laid off 40% of their workers last week, including their head of engineering.
I guess when you can't make a product that consumers want, try getting a military contract!
A bit of disparity, to be sure. I still want a gold toilet seat.
Namaste
Make sure you know the difference.
Let me guess, you're french?
The funny part is, their demos are available exclusively in Apple's QuickTime, but their client isn't Mac compatible. Heh.
--
$tar -xvf
Your premise is wrong because you presume that violence is the desired end result, when in reality, the desired end result is soldier safety combined with an end to hostilities.
Reminds me of Starship Troopers (the book, not the horribly inaccurate movie, horribly inaccurate even by Hollywood's loose standards)
Early in the book, Rico makes a point that he and his teammates are there to provide violence. His commanders decide something needs to be done, to apply violence in a certain way, and it is his job to do it.
Then he goes on about how modern war is not about killing your enemy; its about convincing him that you're right. Violence therefore is not a means to kill; in his kind of war, killing is the opposite of what you want. Your enemy has to be alive to be able to agree with you. He's philosophizing about this because he's on a mission on a planet of almost allies that humanity wants to be more firmly on their side. And therefore his mission is to avoid killing, but to decimate the infrastructure wherever possible.
And then Rico says (paraphrasing), "I've never been asked to kill all the left-handed red heads in a certain area, but if someone decided it needed to be done, me and my men could do it."
Maybe that's what this is about? After you've trained a soldier, after he has reached the point where physical exertion will never tire him again, after he has learned how to shoot as well as can be expected, operate the 200 or so different pieces of equipment he will run into as a soldier - operate them in the dark while sleeping nonetheless, and given him enough field training to ensure he can survive in a warzone...
Maybe the next stage is to teach that soldier how to direct all this ability. The soldier has learned how to be violent. Maybe accelerated massively multi-user virtual reality simulations can provide the training necessary to control that violence, to channel it exactly where needed in exactly the amounts needed.
Think about it; the key to learning any skill is practice and repetition. War games are all fine and good, but they take time to setup. They take time to play. They take time to get to and from. How long does it take for one war game? hours? days?
What if you could run the soldier through the war game in only the time it takes for him to do his job? What if you could continually run him through it again and again, putting him in different situations each time, grading him, providing feedback? How many tactical situations could you put him through in the same time as the previous war game?
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
We, the USA, and the rest of the world spend far too much money on military affairs. Every year it just gets worse.
... is simply bad for business.
The purpose of the military is to protect the local country from invasion from other countries and their armies.
The Americans have 20000 nuclear bombs, no one is going to invade them, no one is even going to get close to invading and occupying them.
They don't need a military any more!! Yet they spend tons of their money on this unnecessary endeavor. It is really warping their minds and is making both their neighbors and the rest of the civilized world uncomfortable.
There is some twisted little defect in the American culture that makes their young people actually want to go into dangerous combat situations on the other side of the world and expose themselves to discomfort, death, and dismemberment against people that they have never even heard of. No one else seriously wants to do this.
But since they have so much powerful weaponry, no one wants to just take them aside for a little chat and suggest that they should just 'chill' because they don't have any real enemies that are dangerous enough for them to require this kind of behavior.
Creating an artifical environment where the young Americans can get their 'gook-killing' urges satisified is really money well spent, as long as the simulation is so good that they want to spend more time in it than in the real world.
Because, frankly, in this increasingly networked world of global corporations, having lots of young trigger-happy running amok with no idea of what they're doing, or who they're doing it to, or why they're doing it
MMO type games are very powerful tools in promoting cooperative operations and excution of tactics. Just look at a high level Everquest raid - 20-40 people all with a specific job, and if somebody does not execute their job perfectly everybody fails. Or look at a really good Counterstrike team, all moving, aiming, and following orders with precision. These people are thousands of miles apart working in sync following commands and doing their specific task to within a few seconds.
Perfect execution as a team and following orders are key to military success and these type of games are excellent at promoting these things.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
So they'll spend most of their time buying the latest fashions in military fatigues and mini-games like playing with hover-tanks?
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Anyone here seen the History Channel?
... stuff if we ever have anything
/. isn't the place for people who understand
We've had several centuries to figure war
out, but it seems people in this country (USA)
don't seem to get it. We constantly hear about
1 (ONE!) soldier getting killed and everyone is
so sad about it. I'd hate to be around to see
when the US finally faces an actual war (fully
declared by Congress, civil rights suspended, etc).
If we face an actual conflict/war with a large,
highly organized force, I only hope the top guys
will figure things out quick enough that we don't
end up with the fight on our own turf. We would
end up with much more than this 200 we keep
hearing about for Iraq.
Anyway, with this simulator, I'm interesting in
what kind of AI is being used. Different countries
have different fighting styles. The Japanese will
just keep coming until the last man/woman/child/
house pet has run out of ammo and killed he/she/it's self. The Germans will be highly organized
and efficient. Mexicans will try to either surround you or divide-and-conquer. Is this sort
of thing being taken into account?
Either way, as they say "The sun never sets on
the American Empire.". I'd bet Bush can fit the
order to take over the planet into 2 sentences.
Now, people, think. The typical American doesn't
even know that we AREN'T a democracy, we are a
Republic. Heck 1/2 of Americans don't know the
time period of their own Civil War. Americans
in general don't think a whole lot, and we'll
be in deep
serious happen.
DON'T BE LEMMINGS, VOTE FAR RIGHT! THE PEOPLE
ARE SUPPOSED TO RULE!
If this post gets modded down, I know then that
History and when it's about to be repeated (sad
for us then, that it's full of mistakes...)
Just a thought...
It wouldn't make you a great soldier, but you could play the terrorists and try to take out the soldiers.
"A Taste of Armageddon" is one of classic Trek's occasional, obvious metaphors for the absurdity of the then-cold war between East and West. Gene Lyons stars as a Federation ambassador named Fox, who boards the Enterprise to reach the planet Eminiar VII, where he hopes to negotiate a peace treaty with the inhabitants. Instead the crew of the Enterprise gets caught in the middle of an interplanetary war between Eminiar and neighboring planet Vendikar. The twist is that the war is being fought on computers, and compliant residents of those "destroyed" areas obediently report to disintegration chambers, where their "virtual" death is made literal. When the Enterprise is "hit" in one of these simulations, both the warlords of Eminiar VII and Ambassador Fox fully expect Capt. Kirk and crew to report to the disintegration center. The feisty Kirk has other plans, of course. And while the madness of this controlled Armageddon makes a suitably surreal satire of the arms race in the 1960s, the story also evoked the endless, daily reports of body counts during the Vietnam War, with no resolution in sight. Aside from its parable aspect, however, the episode gave Kirk one of his earliest and most compelling scenes of Kirkian preachiness in a bold monologue about peace, reportedly written and rewritten numerous times by series producer and indispensable creative hand Gene L. Coon. --Tom Keogh
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
stuff
this isn't going to help. have you ever actually tried running through the woods with a ruck, kevlar, and lce on, firing rounds from an m-16 or saw? i have. even if you can max your pt test, you're dead tired after 5 minutes of 3-5 second rushes, low crawls, and trying to evade enemy fire, mortar sims, keep your squad organized, etc. we do this all the time with miles gear, the army's 15 year old version of lazer tag which is like 2% accurate. the best way to train is to just do the real thing, building up your mind and body for the task at hand. thats why iraq rotations are 1 year instead of 6 months like OEF, half the newbie clusterfucks.
MATRIX THEORY !
i have submitted this as a story. WE will see how DENSE the editors are. LET THE ENERGY FLOW!
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
"Or what happens if it desensitizes soldiers to the point that their slight paranoia turns to burning down whole villages? "
Did you ever watch the movie Platoon? That stuff already happened. The US has no moral high ground when it comes to crimes of war.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
All the top modded posts on /. seem to keep saying "oh this is stupid" but I think most people are missing the point of the training.
It's about organizing, communicating, teamwork, learning to understand the situation from the various sources (some electronic, most contradictory), and leading remotely.
I've played WW2OL for 2+ years now, and it's a HUGE eye-opener to see how much better well-organized squads communicating constantly on teamspeak do, as compared to random lone wolfers running around with their l33t ski11z.
America's Army (the game, not the service) is the same way.
Nobody's saying that shooting a gun in a virtual world will train you how to shoot for real, or give you courage to stand in battle. But what it will give you is a sense of teamwork, and a familiarity with the SITUATION that might help you trust your real-life trained skills and coworkers/soldiers, and might just save your life.
-Styopa
First, we were only a part in the defeat of Hitler, which did not occur within the last fifty years. Second we did NOTHING to Stalin. He lived out his life as dictator of Russia. Third we DID have a choice whether to engage on both occasions. We won nothing, yet people are free? Why is that? Because we have enough economic strength to deter any war against us.
There uses some open source code, and even released their changes like good GPL users. From what I've heard, the servers are all run on some form of linux, and a bunch of the development of the product is as well.
Linux versions and Mac versions of the client are planned, but There is still a very young product with a ton of features ahead of those clients on the todo list. They have a mailing list for both, so sign up and come back when\if they meet your needs.
Here's the kicker though: You aren't in their target market. There's target market is women and men who like to chat socially online. They've recently partnered with iVilliage to bring more women to There. They will openly tell you that FPS gamers and developers are certainly welcome, but not who they're trying to attract.
There is a business, and until Linux\Mac\Non-IE-based-Windows has even 10% of the market share of There's target customers, don't expect them to make this a priority.
IN real combat, you jump off cliffs to avoid enemy fire.
In paintball, you don't dive in thorn bushes to avoid enemy fire, unless you're psychotic or really into it.
God spoke to me
The US Air Force also uses a modified version of Starcraft for simulation. Each side has three "players"; one defense, one offense, and another who coordinates them. An AF budy of mine tried to get a copy for a LAN party, but unfortunately the AF didn't like the possibility that their "game" would find its way into public distribution. Yes, our fly boys know how to handle a Zerg rush.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
Based on what I've seen of this program it's going to result in a bunch of soldiers who obsess about clothing, fabrics, and their hair style.
Of course if you could get the worlds terrorists to start using online games instead of actually exploding their body parts all over the place it might be a handy thing.
I'm afraid this is tax money down the drain, helped along by someone with the right contacts. We'll see.
George Bush Sr.'s cum is on teh spoke!!11!!exclamation point!!!one!!111!
the irony from there.com:
There uses and supports open source software for development, tools, and office systems. We attempt (whenever possible) to share our modifications with the open source community. Because we have just adopted our open source policy, we don't have much source code available yet. Anything released by There and not already covered by a license will be covered by the BSD license.
There is currently using the GNU Malloc library, which is covered by the LGPL license. Our source code for this is here: GnuMallocSystem.zip
Please check this page regularly for updates and more information about There's ongoing commitment to open source.
...in the real world people fear dying, and that fear makes all the difference. Not the fear of losing, not a sense of caution, but real, gut-wrenching fear.
The simulators may help them practice tactics more easily, but they will never give them the taste of fear they're going to feel on the battlefield, so the experience won't be anything like the battlefield.
Fear rules.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
First Person Shooters are good for plotting out stratagy.
After all in a first person shooter your stratagy is what will make or break you.
Of course some jerk out there is telling the world first person shooters desensitise people to violence. I'll lay odds he thinks all the hateful stares he get's from gammers are the result of FPS and not the BS he sells in his book.
Of course now he'll make a second book clamming massive multiplayer online games have the same impact.
I don't actually exist.
First YOu HELPED defeat an army (German one) but you did nto defeat comunism. It felt apart 50+ years after WW2 due to economical reason and mostly inter reason. nothing to do with the US.
THEN AGAIN let us see how the US did against NON-conventional warfare. That is guerilla like. Like Vietnam. Or should I remind you how a superior warfare army like Russia did against the Afghan and their guerilla warfare ? Or german army against Partisan in various country ?
Frankly I am wondering about moderation here. Because your post is modded Insightful +5 whereas it should be -5 overrated or -5 uninformational.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
What is MMOG?
Less is more !
Many armies including the us one have used games to train (even quake) their soldiers.
Another day without news on slashdot ?
Perhaps you can be able to answer this question...
In Episode 25, where the crew of the Enterprise gets attacked by these spores and
start acting real weird, like hippies and stuff... The part where Kirk leaves his quarters for the last time and opens his safe...
What was the combination?
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Orson Scott Card should see a massive boost in interest from the film industry. Enders Game, ironically or not, now fits into a potential real-world 'doomsday' scenerio with all of the trimmings. Truly Bizarre.
.. the media was hung-up on the Columbine thing..
:o)
One of the big things that they focused on was that the guys played FPS shooters.
There was one activist from the military, who took the statistics from the massacre (number of shots fired vs hits, on which part of the body, etc.) and claimed that they were better than most military people, and this expertise had to have come from the large number of hours they spent playing Quake.
He then made the statement "these games should be banned, because they provide military quality weapons training."
So at least one person agrees with you
Recruit #1: "What are you doing?"
Recruit #2: "Spawn camping."
Recruit #1: "You do know the enemy just doesnt materialize out of thin air?"
Recruit #2: "Your just trying to whore my kill."
Recruit #1: "What - "
Recruit #2: "Shhh - I'm about to ding."
No.
you can easily outfit a regular mp5 or m-16 to shoot a paintball projectile and its almost exactly the same thing. It hurts a little but so what thats just an insentive not to get hit! with paintball you at least get some damn excersise! hell thats how swat tems train.
Bigger balls aren't really anything you want to strive for... it's likely a sign of mental retardation:
0 3- fragile_x.html
http://www.midweeknews.com/health/articles/1112
The only dick swinging going on at Slashdot is to the people checking out the match.com banner ads.
Hmmm. Maybe they can add a odor module that smells like cordite and pissed pants. Or a training add that adds a 60 lb pack and adjusted movement modifiers while you are sitting there playing.
Honor belongs to those who dare, not to the critic who sits by and stares
If anything our training had us often seeking cover when just plain concealment would have done just as well and still allowed us a lane of fire.
This was the part he was talking about. When you loose the 'war training' aspect of the 'game', tactics that work in the game that would get you slaughtered in a real fight come into existance. You were sacrificing opportunities for firing lines where the cover was adequate for paintballs, but not for assault weapons. You still won because the other's had no idea about real tactics. They probably didn't prepare like you guys did (It's your life vs their fun).
I don't read AC A human right
This reminds me of Sons of Liberty and what Snake said about the diminished sense of reality with VR Training:
RAIDEN: I was a part of the Army's Force XXI trials...
PLISKEN: Force XXI? That's about tactical IT deployment, right?
PLISKEN: Any field experience?
RAIDEN: No -- not really.
PLISKEN: So this is your first.
RAIDEN: I've had extensive training --
PLISKEN: the kind that's indistinguishable from the real thing.
PLISKEN: Like what?
RAIDEN: Sneaking mission 60,
RAIDEN: Weapons 80,
PLISKEN: VR, huh.
RAIDEN: But realistic in every way.
PLISKEN: A virtual grunt of the digital age. That's just great.
RAIDEN: That's far more effective than live exercises.
PLISKEN: You don't get injured in VR, do you?
PLISKEN: Every year, a few soldiers die in field exercises.
RAIDEN: There's pain sensation in VR, and even a sense of reality and
urgency.
PLISKEN: The only difference is that it isn't actually happening.
PLISKEN: That's the way they want you to think,
PLISKEN: to remove you from the fear that goes with battle situations.
PLISKEN: War as a video game --
PLISKEN: what better way to raise the ultimate soldier?
RAIDEN: Snake, have you ever -- enjoyed killing someone?
RAIDEN:I'm not sure. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between
reality and a game...
SNAKE: Diminished sense of reality, huh? VR training will do that.
Makes me wonder if it's a good idea...
The whole video-game-as-training.
But maybe I've been playing too much Metal Gear Solid.
Here's the kicker though: You aren't in their target market. There's target market is women and men who like to chat socially online. They've recently partnered with iVilliage to bring more women to There. They will openly tell you that FPS gamers and developers are certainly welcome, but not who they're trying to attract.
Oh, how I love assumptions...
1) I'm female
2) I'm NOT an FPS player, at all... my ex-husband, after about a year of begging, got me to try Half-Life for half an hour, after which I nearly threw up from Quake-sickness
3) I have played several MMOGs and play on other web-based "social" gaming sites
4) I'm not even employed in the IT industry (anymore)
So I'm EXACTLY their target market, apparently.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Cover, squad-based movement tactics, proper marksmanship including body position, breath control, trigger squeeze, and proper aim all make an enormous difference on the battlefield. Take your spray-and-pray approach up against a US Army Infantry Squad in a paintball tournament, and you'll see some difference. Do it with accurate weaponry (which paintball, unfortunately, is not) and you'll get your hind end completely handed to you. FPS is fun and all, and it definitely can help you work on battlefield awareness, proper aim, and team-based tactics, but don't think it's just spraying projectiles.
Me, I just work in a special ops unit doing intelligence. Not quite so 'glamorous,' but everybody in the Army is capable of some infantry stuff.