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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,
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.
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--;}
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.
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.
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,
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
Asymmetric Warfare? Is that what you call it when America attacks another country?
More or less, yes. Asymmetric warfare is when one side has a tank, and the other has a machine gun in the back of a pickup truck.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
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!
I'm not sure if you know this but not getting killed is sort of a priority for soldiers. Training and equipment tend to help them with that. Oh, and if you dislike the current path America is taking in respect to attacking other countries, perhaps next election vote for the democrats? Remember if you don't vote, your "opinion" doesn't matter.
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.
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,
[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?
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
Funny, I bet the 156,000 troops in Iraq would have a different opinion.
You have a good point, land-based long range missles take a lot of the human factor out. But I think you're missing the real point. They're purpose is just as much about protecting our troops as is it inflicting damage. One way or another we're going to strike - so would you rather do it safely? I would. And if you were a member of the US Armed Forces you would too.
You would do better to complain about the accuracy of the weapon instead of it's destructive power. (That being said, these weapons have amazing accuracy.)
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,
News flash:
A strong Russian military and resource starved germany is why Hitler and Stalin didn't wind up ruling the world, and don't forget it.
Russia always strogn and The british caused the second condition. america helped with the second condition but mostly supplied resources and came in after to claim victory. The americans were important but not the #1 or #2 reason that the war was won.
Now a Strong American army is why we don't all have a mad itch to play pokemon and watch tentacle porn..... omg... Did we lose the pacific theatre?
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
In just about any Western-style war (since classical times) it is typical that retreating troops will be attacked to the extent that it is possible.
Traditionally, the big no-no is to attack troops that have surrendered. But retreating guys are generally considered "fair game", especially since anyone who is not surrendering may just be regrouping to attack you again.
What was different about the Gulf War was that the US's overwhelming advantage meant the retreating Iraqi forces could be (and were) utterly slaughtered. And although each Iraqi soldier did have the opportunity to try to surrender or to desert, the nature of airborne attack is such that many targets don't see much reason to surrender until it is too late.
Fortunately the US learned quite a bit from the whole "highway of death" experience. So this time around, instead of crushing the entire Iraqi army, they concentrated on embarrassing the Iraqi government enough that the Iraqi population would finally reject it.
Whether or not I think the war was justified, I have to admit the US forces succeeded in deposing Saddam very quickly and with many fewer deaths on either side than anyone expected.
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.
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 ___________________________________
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
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.
Yes, especially if they were on my side.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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!
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.
BTW, when you are in another country killing people, they are called natives.... not foreigners.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
A bit of disparity, to be sure. I still want a gold toilet seat.
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
"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
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