The War Of The Virtual Worlds

man_ls writes "The University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute is working with the U.S. Joint Forces Command to harness supercomputer power, to simulate a virtual continent for use in urban battlefield situations. The simulation, set in the year 2015, involves 100,000 entities to simulate, although the system can support more than a million."

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[AviLazar]

this article on Wired News

Insider scoop

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging by the screenshots (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65403 ,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1#) this is running the ancient ModSaf program (http://www.sisostds.org/webletter/siso/iss_75/art _367.htm). The WIRED article quotes a guy who "ported it to Linux"- which isn't very impressive, because the original platform was Solaris

ModSaf has been populating tank simulaters with NPC targets since 1982.

Insterestingly, the "supercomputers" this runs on were first purchased for Beowulf use- but the clustering software was removed for this project.

Re:Tax dollar at work

[Anonymous Coward]

No, actually they're predicting that by 2015 America's enemies will have created prototype versions of modular combat vehicles which can combine into more powerful forms.

Rumor has it the government will be contracting with Japanese firms to create our own version.

Re:You do know that the US lost the war gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

And when the US general in charge of the iraqi side did use tactics such as this, killing a lot of US troops, the generals for the US side declared it null and void and ordered the troops back to life.

That's not true at all, but it is based on a real incident. In the Iraq war game, the Iraq side managed to sink the US aircraft carriers.

They did this by driving up in small boats filled with dynamite. In real life, there would be sailors on deck to shoot those attackers. In the wargame, they didn't use the full complement of Navy crew, because it'd be a waste of their time to just guard a ship deck for the whole 2 weeks.

So, the Iraqi attack wasn't plausible at all. The referee correctly judged this, and revived the battleships.

There were no roadside bombs or suicide bombs in that wargame because it only lasted 2 weeks, which is as far ahead as the Pentagon was planning. If you remember the actual Operation Iraqi Freedom, the first 3-4 weeks went just fine, and only later did the guerrilla attacks start. The military's wargames was to plan how to INVADE a country, not OCCUPY it.

Re:Or as the good book said:

[drlake]

If you're going to quote the Old Testament, at least be accurate. The Hebrew in Exodus 20:13 is more consistent with "Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder." It's just frequently translated as "kill", even though the rest of the Old Testament makes a mockery of that translation.

Re:Tax dollar at work

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.tec.army.mil/research/products/TD/tvd/s urvey/OpenScene_ModStealth.html

Re:Or as the good book said:

[pjt33]

Actually, Torah provided for protection of those who killed another without malice aforethought. See Deut 19:1-13 (KJV, NIV).

Re:Or as the good book said:

[Jason Earl]

That's hilarious. You clearly need to re-read the Old Testament. On several ocassions the Lord commanded the Israelites to destroy every man woman and child in a city. On at least one ocassion (I'm not a Biblical scholar) Saul was even commanded to kill all of the animals in a city. Saul got in trouble because he decided that instead of destroying perfectly good animals that he would use them as sacrifices.

Perhaps you should have quoted the New Testament.

Re:As Martin Luther King Jr. Once said:

[beppu]

Weapons are the bearers of bad news;
all people should detest them.

The wise man values the left side,
and in time of war he values the right.
Weapons are meant for destruction,
and thus are avoided by the wise.
Only as a last resort
will a wise person use a deadly weapon.
If peace is her true objective
how can she rejoice in the victory of war?
Those who rejoice in victory
delight in the slaughter of humanity.
Those who resort to violence
will never bring peace to the world.
The left side is a place of honor on happy occasions.
The right side is reserved for mourning at a funeral.
When the lieutenants take the left side to prepare for war,
the general should be on the right side,
because he knows the outcome will be death.
The death of many should be greeted with great sorrow,
and the victory celebration should honor those who have died.

Lao Tzu (from the Tao Te Ching)

Re:Or as the good book said:

[drlake]

There's a huge difference. If you actually read the Old Testament (more properly known as the Hebrew Bible) you would see that there is no biblical prohibition against killing in general. YHWH routinely instructed the Hebrews to kill other people.

Moralizing about human behavior from a book that doesn't even apply to most people in the first place is rather silly, but if you're going to do it at least get it right. For those who are confused by my comment about the Old Testament not applying, read the New Testament. The foundation of Christianity is a new covenant with "God", which replaces the previous covenant (the Mosaic one, including the Ten Commandments). The prevalence of christians using the Old Testament as justification for their beliefs just demonstrates their ignorance of their own religion and their lack of understanding that under their own doctrine, the Ten Commandments do not apply.

Re:Or as the good book said:

[Allasard]

>Maybe I'm being stupid, but I'm still not quite sure what the difference between murdering someone and killing them is.

It comes down to justification.

Murder is causing an unjustified death.

However outlawing murder still allows for killing people:
- in war
- as punishment
- etc...