Game Technology Helps Drive Military Training

longacre writes "With the gaming industry now spending more to develop user interfaces than the Pentagon, the Army has begun putting all that R&D to good use in weaponry and training. Reversing the traditional role of games attempting to simulate real life killing machines, it is now the weapons makers using gaming technology to make their products more effective. Popular Mechanics notes, 'Already, [Mark Bigham, director of business development for Raytheon Tactical Intelligence Systems] says that Raytheon has been experimenting with Wii controllers to explore the possibilities for training simulators and other applications that require physical movement. Just think, one day, the R&D that Nintendo put into Wii bowling could end up influencing basic training.'"

Comments

Low-budget Marine Corps

[Enderandrew]

This isn't shocking in the least. The Army plays a glorified version of laser tag. Pilots use flight simulator software. Even in the low-budget Marine Corps, I fired on a virtual M16 course.

Re:Low-budget Marine Corps

[iamhassi]

""Just think, one day, the R&D that Nintendo put into Wii bowling could end up influencing basic training"

Actually in basic we had a SNES with a training game on it in the barracks. It was a shooting game with pop-up targets and we had a full-size M16 "zapper". Graphics were very simple but it was effective, had to be very accurate to actually hit the target. Only thing it missed was the kick-back. Some of the guys that weren't very good did improve using the training simulation.

This wasn't 10 yrs ago either, this was 2005.

VBS / ArmA

[slashbob22]

One of the best examples of military grade games and their consumer equivalent is Virtual Battlefield Simulator (VBS) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VBS2 and Operation Flashpoint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFP / Armed Assault http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArmA:_Armed_Assault. Both are really great games and are used for military and civilian (police, swat) training.

Re:Scalpels not swords

[LaughingCoder]

As long as the US government wastes over half its budget on the military and wars .../blockquote> Exaggerate much? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget,_2007 Try 19% in 2007. Yes, it's a lot of money, but a far cry from "over half".