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US Army To Invest $50 Million In Game Development
$50 million in funding has been approved for the Army to establish a unit that will develop games. The purpose of the games will be to train soldiers for various tasks, and they say there is no intent to compete with commercial games. We've previously discussed other efforts by the Army to integrate games into their training programs.
"Col. Mark McManigal, the capabilities manger for gaming under the Training and Doctrine Command, said the selected game must provide low-cost training and must not require large number of technicians to run. It must also have a play-back function for after-action reviews, he said. 'One of the major events for training is to be able to capture all these events, good or bad, throughout the entire scenario,' he said. Trainers must be able to edit the game during play to change the difficulty level or add complexity to an exercise. For example, they must also be able to edit terrain to replicate training areas or combat zones, he said."
Deja vu means the trainer changed something.
The hard-core difficulty level will result in actual death of the player.
There won't be any cheat codes.
For anyone who plays counterstrike or any similar games, you know how important it is the know your terrain... B, A, middle, doors, etc.
If they would be able to train themselves on a portion of a city they need to raid or attack, they should do much better than looking at a map and photographs. They'd have spatial memory of wherever they needed to go. Just like the locals.
Still, someone or something would have to get in there for the initial data. I think I read a story about cameras on bug sized flying machines somewhere.