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."

Comments

What about the weapons?

[diablobsb]

Yeah yeah! but does it include the BFG?

I'm wondering...

[gustgr]

may I play age of empires on it?

So there is a market

[Anonymous Coward]

for the SX-8

Bush Mode

[Tablizer]

I switched it into G.W.Bush Mode, and ended up with a big charcoal sphere :-P

Re:Bush Mode

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

How strange: personally, when I switched to G.W.Bush Mode, I ended up choking on a pretzel...

Remember..

[turboflux]

Keep your Sims happy!

Re:Remember..

[AndroidCat]

With that setup, think of how many swimming pool ladders they could remove with one command.

As Martin Luther King Jr. Once said:

[beppu]

I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.

Re:As Martin Luther King Jr. Once said:

[DNS-and-BIND]

Wasn't MLK assassinated by a man who didn't like the fact that he was speaking out?

Here's another quote for you:

"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun."
-- The Dalai Lama

Re:As Martin Luther King Jr. Once said:

[Kaa]

I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.

The very obvious consequence of this would be that all people of good will will get the shit kicked out of them by people of ill will who do not seem to have a problem studying war.

Re:As Martin Luther King Jr. Once said:

[wattersa]

Evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
- Dark Helmet, Spaceballs

I wish it were possible to not study war. Of course I would prefer it if everyone went about his business (his because it's usually the male population) without feeling the need to dominate other people or extract money from them or capture them as human slaves. As one of the militia leaders said in Black Hawk Down, "there will always be killing. This is how things are in _our_ world." The main benefit of having a highly trained fighting force is that you can strongly motivate people not to misbehave, especially if you are the world's "911" service, set on a hair trigger to attack and destroy anyone who launches a first strike of WMDs against another country. I know it's a rosy view but it beats the alternative I think. Yeah, I know that something should have been done about Rwanda. Don't forget that there is an African Union and there are neighboring African states that are supposed to send troops into areas like Rwanda, as was done with Liberia last year. Hopefully Darfur will motivate them more than Rwanda did.

In any case, "We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us." (unknown, attrib. to George Orwell). I for one hope that our forces remain the best in the world and that the new administration has a more globally conscious intervention policy.

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)

wargames?

[eobanb]

This reminds me of Wargames. In case you haven't seen it, it involved a 'supercomputer' that could play out various scenarios leading up to a nuclear war. In the end the computer figured out that, like the game tic-tac-toe, if both sides were even remotely intelligent, there was no way for either side to win.

Re:wargames?

[Gr8Apes]

Reminds me more of one of several Star Trek episodes, namely the one where two worlds had computerized war and the people would be "dead" and walk over to the "vaporization" chamber.

Re:wargames?

[Coryoth]

What a sad state Slashdot has come to when someone (with a remarkably high UID I note) uses the phrase "In case you haven't seen it" With respect to the film Wargames.

This is Slashdot - you used to be able to assume everyone would have seen Wargames. I don't know whether this is a dilution of the geek quotient here, or a sign that the Slashdot audience is now made up of 15 year olds, but I fear for Slashdot's future.*

Jedidiah

* Not really, Slashdot went to hell a long time ago, but it still provides amusement such as this.

That's nothing

[antifoidulus]

When Duke Nukem Forever comes out, everyone's computer will be able to handle millions of bodies!

The hard part

[moorcito]

Now the hard part is convincing everyone that real-life wars are outdated and we should start using the virtual battlefield.

Re:The hard part

[AndroidCat]

Wars will still be costly with this virtual battlefield. Think of all the quarters needed to play!

wow

[WormholeFiend]

to simulate a virtual continent for use in urban battlefield situations

That's one big fucking city.

You can also find...

[AviLazar]

this article on Wired News

It's the smell!

[centauri]

Word to the wise: don't make this virutal world too perfect. Entire crops could be lost.

And in the future

[aicrules]

the search for WMD is as simple as:
SELECT w.GPSCoordinates
FROM Weapons w
WHERE w.DestructionType = 'Mass'
AND w.Owner 'United States'

Harsh Realm

[rve]

Reminds me of this
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0182587/

Reminds me of "A Taste of Armageddon"

[nz_mincemeat]

...as in the ST:TOS episode.

Now where are the casaulty units? :p

Tax dollar at work

[DrAmes]

Notice the minimized browser in the bottom screenshot?

Re:Tax dollar at work

[DrAmes]

I've actually worked with that simulator before -- bad collision detection is probably the least of it's worries.

More specific scenario needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of good guys and bad guys, they need a simulator where you are this military force propping up a hugely unpopular puppet government. You can go on missions with the puppet government's national guard, but you can't send in their national guard by themselves or they'll ally with the "bad guys".

And maybe a scoring system where if you have to keep troops there to support the government against its people indefinitely, you get no points, if the puppet government turns into a repressive dictatorship, you get one point, if the people overthrow the government and replace it with a fundamentalist theocracy, you get 2 points, and if you're right in the middle of a big urban street battle with the bad guys and you get a message that says "your capital was just nuked by a country you've been paying no attention to at all", you lose.

No, actually, that'd suck. Nevermind.

wanna make it really cool?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

hook it up to America's Army. A 100,000 player MMOFPS/RTS, with a command structure, a continent to fight over and no modular missions. A big-picture, constantly changing war. Wanna make it even cooler? have new technology appear every few years, have the ammount of new weapons you can build related to how much of the land/natural resources you control - have things built on percentages, not just numerical limits.
Of course, the thing is that this just becomes a big computer game rather than a military training system, but like America's Army which is really designed to get people to sign up for the US Army, (as long as everything is realistic) this would actually allow the powers that be to know just who the best leaders/tacticians/strategists are in a time of crisis, without having to actually get a few 1000 soldiers brains blown out to seperate the wheat from the chaff.
Oh, and have the 'leaders' in a virtual command HQ, which could potentially be overrun / blown up.

Wait... that was the entire plan for my world-dominating computer game... d'oh. No-one do anything with it for a while, will you? I'm just popping out to the patent office.

Re:wanna make it really cool?

[xsupergr0verx]

Apparantly you don't play many games online in public servers. A character named "GOATSE!" always runs into a group of teammates and shoots an anti-tank rocket directly into the ground, or equivalent.

Re:Uh oh

[ryanmfw]

Well, while that's possible, it's unimportant. I'm glad our military is doing this after all. We wouldn't want to get caught without skilled commanders, or even modern strategy. Before World War 2, France had the largest army in Europe, yet it managed to lose because German generals(specifically Guderian) pioneered new strategies. Most people don't think about this, at least Americans, but there are other armies out there that are advanced too. Maybe not as powerful, but still there. We need to stay focused on keeping the lead, instead of relaxing on our supposed invincibility.

Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum

[Anonymous Coward]

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
-- Vegetius

I always wondered.

[Lumpy]

why the US govt does not use sometihng like the american army game to test tactics and run simulations and train on..

some of the tactics I hear about in IRAQ I know I have used in counterstrike years ago.

the FPS gamer is one of the greatest resources of tactical study.. add in a prize for a team that can push out the blue team from the fortress and you just trained your soldiers in the blue team in real combat technique.

Very true

[Infonaut]

But also very, very difficult.

The unfortunate problem is that even if some are ready to give up the study of and preparation for war, others are not. I might be able to convince another American that it's a good idea, and I might even be able to convince a German or a Finn. But as an American how could I convince a Chetchen, or an Iranian, or a North Korean? Would their own leaders even want to convince them of the rightness of disarming? Leaders of "good will" have always been few and far between.

How can we all stop preparing for war? That is the challenge, but so far I've not encountered any plan that seems even remotely practical, given the cultural, ethnic, and religious schisms that divide people across the globe.

Re:Very true

[Infonaut]

I understand completely what you're saying. Yes, there are plenty of people who view the US as expansionist brutes. Believe it or not, a lot of Americans aren't interested in bombing people who have never been a threat to Americans.

But that sort of underlines my point. It's difficult to even get Americans to understand that bombing the crap out of people isn't always the smartest way to make the world a safer place. It's that difficult for me to convince the guy sitting next to me that invading Iraq wasn't the smartest way to fight terrorism, or that constraining freedoms in the US isn't a good example of democracy in action.

So if it's that difficult for me to convince another American of this, and we have the same cultural and religious background, and I'm in the same freakin' room with the guy, how difficult is it going to be to convince someone whose cultural and economic reference points are completely different?

I'm not saying this means we should not try to engage people from other cultures. I've done a lot of traveling and I always try to elicit opinions about the United States, our leaders, our foreign policy, and the impact of American culture. But I do think that while people are people, people are also not the same. Their beliefs and values are shaped by their culture and history, and not everyone follows the Judeo-Christian beliefs that have defined the United States and Western Europe.

Even if the United States put down its weapons today, the world would still be full of war and conflict. If the United States laid down its weapons and completely demilitarized, would that truly make the world a more peaceful place in the long run?

Maybe it would, but I'm not so sure. With the US out of the picture, someone else would step into the power vacuum. Maybe it would be Russia, and maybe it would be China. Would a dominant Russia be more peacful than the US? Would China?

Re:Very true

[Infonaut]

Actually I was only using the example of Americans, Germans, Finns, etc. because there are some shared religous and cultural norms that would allow me as an American to convince one of these people as to the need for disarming. By the same token it would be difficult for a North Korean or Chechen to convince me of the need for disarmament.

My point was that for a wide variety of reasons it is difficult for the message of peace to pass through these religious and cultural walls. It becomes doubly difficult given that most often it is leaders talking to leaders, rather than regular individuals talking to regular individuals.

I agree with you that the world is beautiful. I just happen to think that while the variety of cultures and religions across the world make life interesting, human nature is to define each other by our differences rather than our similarities. So finding worldwide peace is not something we'll reach for a long, long time.

Re:Very true

[Jason Earl]

I spent my high school years as a Gringo in Peru. While I was there two of my Peruvian friends were killed by terrorists from Sendero Luminoso because they looked like the might be Americans. So excuse me if I have a strong opinion about this subject.

One of the things that I saw while I lived in Peru was that most Peruvians (as individuals) were as nice a people as you might want to meet. Most of the anti-American sentiment that existed in Peru, and there was a *lot* of it, was the direct result of manipulation by various Peruvian political leaders. Peru is a fairly screwed up country, and the political leaders there spend most of their time blaming their problems on the Devils in the United States. Now, I am not going to say that the U.S. hasn't forwarded some pretty bad South American foreign policies over the years, but Peru's major problems stem from rampant corruption of their own political system and not from any policy that the U.S. might have adopted. About the worst thing that U.S. has done in recent years is loan Peru money so that its corrupt leaders could waste it on gewgaws or leave the country with it. Despite the fact that Peru's problems are almost entirely of Peruvian manufacture the United States is every Peruvian politician's favorite scapegoat, and the Peruvian population is uneducated enough that they buy these lies wholesale.

As an example, at one point the government-sponsored TV station ran a totally bogus news story about a string of child abductions in which it was alleged that an American was running around Lima abducting children and stealing their corneas for sale in the U.S. I remember seeing one of these broadcasts on the news and the main graphic featured a silohuette with a question mark on its face backed by a U.S. flag (how they knew it was an American that was stealing the eyes was never told).

Months later one of the independent newspapers ran a story exposing the "Gringo saca ojos" story as a complete fraud, but by then the damage had been done. Heck, my father's SUV was actually attacked by a mob in downtown Lima, and the only thing that saved him was A) he spoke Spanish, and B) he had two of my little sisters in the SUV with him. He was finally able to calm the crowd down by pointing out that he was a father as well, and that he had his two little girls in the car with him. As it was quite a bit of damage was done to the car, and the incident scared the heck out of my entire family.

So what's the point to all this? The point is that it doesn't matter that the people in a country are sane if the people in power in their country are not sane. Most people believe what they are told, even cynical and well-educated people like the average American. If Peruvians are told by the government that America is responsible for their problems, then a lot of them are going to believe it. On a similar note if Moslems around the world are told that America is "the great Satan" by their religious leaders then no amount of positive PR is likely to make the average Moslem disbelieve that. America is a big target, and we make more than our share of mistakes, but much of the hatred for America is nothing more than shrewd political maneuvering. America is the enemy that all sorts of political leaders use to rally the uneducated and ill-informed into their causes.

My grandfather was an missionary for the LDS church (the Mormons) right before WWII. He barely escaped Germany with his life. A few years later he was back in Europe with a U.S. bomber squadron blasting the life out of people that just a few years earlier he had been teaching about Jesus Christ. My Grandfather loved the German people, but for whatever reason they let themselves get put into a position where the folks running the country were insane and dangerous, and so for the sake of the rest of the world he volunteered to blast Germans to bits, many of them complete innocents. Since the German people were unwilling to remove the threat that Hitler represented by themselves, my g

Re:Very true

[Anonymous Coward]

What these "sane" people, all over the world, need to do is kick the loonies out of power

I agree. George Bush is a good place to start

Re:Or as the good book said:

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Thou shalt not kill. No exceptions given, not even for self-defense.

100k?

[Lord_Dweomer]

100k entities? Battlefield:1942 eat your heart out.

Seriously though, this is good for gamers, because this technology will inevitably end up in our games. Planetside tried to make a FPS with that many players, and while their cone of fire killed it (among other things), I definitely see FPSs going in that direction in the future, especially with the increasing availability of broadband.

I've always wanted to have large historic battles, but since the numbers of soldiers were so large back then, it wasn't really feasible for a FPS, but now perhaps they could do it after all. Can you say Battle of Helms Deep with every character being a real person?

A bit too late?

[mobiux]

"One experiment in this series, "Urban Resolve," began October 12. Set in the year 2015, in JFCOM's description, "it involves a U.S.-led coalition force that must confront and overcome a skilled adversary who is equipped with modern capabilities and is operating in an urban environment." "

Don't ya think they got this running about a year too late? Might have been helpful in this other thing going on in the meat world.

Re:A bit too late?

[Kwil]

Actually.. that one is scary.

Is the US planning on invading other first world countries now?

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.

How about

[phrenq]

How about a nice game of chess?

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.

Still no cure for cancer

[Cryofan]

and still no cure for the idiocy that afflicts American minds so they we let the military industrial complex and the religious nuts control what we do with our tax dollars.

Heaven forbid we stop riling up the Muslim world, leave them in peace, and instead concentrate on curing diseases that kill thousands.

3000 Americans died in WTC 911. But every day 5000 Americans die, many of cancer and heart disease...

Lunacy....

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.

This is a bad idea.

[Jookey]

This simulation sounds like a bad idea. As with any mathamatecal model, it is only as good as the assumptions made, regardless of the resolution. This is exactly the kind of thinking that screwed us up in vietnam. Our foregn policy was being decided by mathmaticians when it should have been decided by historians. I get the impression this is planning for the next Faluja. Our problems in Iraq are not due to bad tactics, they are caused by bad strategy. I dont care how well your soldiers are trained; in urban combat the best kill ratio you can hope for is 10 to 1. We don't need more teraflops we need some good old fashoned common sense. http://www.exile.ru/archive/by_author/gary_brecher .html/

And as Mr. Miyagi once said:

[wass]

(really through a dialog):

Daniel : Hey - you ever get into fights when you were a kid?
Miyagi : Huh - plenty.
Daniel : Yeah, but it wasn't like the problem I have, right?
Miyagi : Why? Fighting fighting. Same same.
Daniel : Yeah, but you knew karate.
Miyagi : Someone always know more.
Daniel : You mean there were times when you were scared to fight?
Miyagi : Always scare. Miyagi hate fighting.
Daniel : Yeah, but you like karate.
Miyagi : So?
Daniel : So, karate's fighting. You train to fight.
Miyagi : That what you think?
Daniel : [pondering] No.
Miyagi : Then why train?
Daniel : [thinks] So I won't have to fight.
Miyagi : [laughs] Miyagi have hope for you.

Public Policy Simulator Needed

[Felgerkarb]

While I think this is pretty cool, even if only for the 'gee whiz' factor, and I think anything that maintains and supports military preparedness is a good thing (especially if it can be done virtually), I think this is missing the point.

I don't think the issue is that the U.S. Military is losing wars, or is somehow not prepared tactically/strategically speaking (though funding and morale may be an issue). I mean, the initial stages of the conflict in Iraq were a military success. Similarly, Afghanistan was a successful military action. This simulator will not address the political/economic/ethnic/religious realities that have to be addressed after the fighting stops.

So, if this helps plan for urban combat, and potentially reduce military and civilian casualties, it's a great thing. But, ultimately, the U.S. has no trouble winning wars.....if I may borrow a cliched phrase, the problem is winning the peace.

For an interesting analysis on the logistics of 'nation building', please see this recently completed report.

Re:Any other ideas besides war?!?

[Jubedgy]

This is an application developed specifically for the military. The military must remain trained, and it is far easier (and cheaper) to do it in simulation rather than try and do it in real life.

Just because our military ensures it is well-trained does NOT mean our country is focused on war. The purpose of our military is to protect US (assuming you are an American citizen). Would you want an untrained police force fighting crime? An untrained fire department fighting fires? An untrained surgeon operating on you? I know I wouldn't. I also wouldn't want an untrained military trying to defend me. It would be suicide for them and useless for us.

If you can think up a better way to train our war forces using scenarios other than war, I'm all ears. Unless and until we no longer have a need for a military, we had better keep it trained as well as we can.

The problem with preparing for war

[aepervius]

is that sometimes, you are so prepared that you feel the need to create your own war, out of various reason (religious, self righteousness, hidden WMD). A lot of people around here feel that the US long ago went beyond the "preparing for war" step and are way into the "being a master at crushing opponent mercilessly" and thus those other country feel the need to take "inssurance" that the US will not do war against them, for example by seeking out WMD themselves or targeting local population to make sure any battle would be extremly bloody. In other word, when the #1 army in the world is preparing for war, and you do not have any chance with conventional way, then use the dirtiest nasty trick you can to make sure that #1 army will hesitate a bit.

I have to wonder anyway why US has to prepare to war against country half the world away which could not care less about the US if left at their own devices. Especially with Checheny which is right now mostly a russian problem. How about a new US doctrine "Let other be". US might try that and becomming the #1 preparing for diplomacy, would be nice isn't it ? And by diplomacy I do not mean putting a lot of pressure on the population by cutting economic aids or closing markets. Or what about #1 helping countries without STRING attached ? Or how about being #1 at helping themselves by transfering a big part of their military project to education, or social ?

Oh, kinda like Morrowind...

[DourSalmon]

but smaller.

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...