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Norway Is Gamifying Warfare By Driving Tanks With Oculus Rift
Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes "Look at Norway, where the Army has started using Oculus Rift to drive tanks with increased visibility, according to the Norwegian TV station tu.no. Four VR cameras are mounted on the sides of the tank to give the soldier inside donning the headset a full 360 degree view of what's going on outside, like X-ray vision. Using cameras to 'see through' a vehicle isn't a new concept; when the hatches are down tanks are notoriously hard to navigate. But the Oculus Rift dev kit is just a fraction of the price of traditional 360-degree camera equipment: Lockheed Martin's F-35 helmet for pilots can cost tens of thousands of dollars."
This is nice that someone implemented it. Dreamed about that for few years back as any armored vehicle driver has problems to see around well without rear camera etc.
The latency / integration requirements for the F - 35 are probably a lot more sophisticated.
It refers to turning something that would otherwise be uninteresting into a game in order to make it more interesting for participants.
wanted to pointed out that by spread location I mean using MIMO type transmission to create a difficult to trace signal...
What's the point of war, when you have drones battling?
Couldn't they just solve wars by playing a video game?
I bet mr. Putin would PWN!
if more than one person could see the video and if it were capable of multiple video views in real time
"Gamify" is such an ugly neologism, even in the situations it was coined to cover (ie. the ones where a non-game task is dressed up in game-style features by some means), that it really should be taken out and shot. In this case, they aren't even 'gamifying'. They're just experimenting with COTS gear as a, presumably cheaper, presentation system for the stitched-together output of the exterior cameras. That doesn't make the situation somehow more game-like.
Sweet! Now we can get updates real time from facebook about what the tanks are doing.
You've just realized why autonomous drones are necessary; they can't be jammed.
If you're broadcasting a 1 MW jamming signal, you are a pretty bright light for HARM missiles or other radar-seeking technology. More sophisticated schemes or ECM are possible, but the physics is pretty clear on how you track down a broadcast location.
..don't panic
A couple of paint grenades (paint filled "water balloons") and your fancy VR system is blind.
The first thing that I thought of when reading the article was the scifi novel "A Boy And His Tank" (Leo Frankowski), or maybe a slight echo of the ending of "Ender's Game" (In short, both follow the plot idea of "Yeah kid, this is a neat game. Blow them up!! Great job. Next battle, um, simulation, is tomorrow."
Let's see... computer simulated fighter combat (drones), computer simulated tactical combat (robo-soliders), computer simulated tank combat... Meanwhile Iran hacks drone into following its orders and land (oops). May the best hacker win.
Why is the soldier inside? Shouldn't he be FAR FAR AWAY?!
Four VR cameras are mounted on the sides of the tank to give the soldier inside donning the headset a full 360 degree view of what's going on outside, like X-ray vision.
Or like a window.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Is low toy grade. Its amazing! We have found out that the toy grade playthings are actually CHEAPER than the mil spec EMP safe water/dirt/shock/static hardened military counterpart!!!
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Try ejecting out of an f35 with an oculus rift rubber banded to your face - I'll take a premium helmet, please.
Driver: Why did I suddenly get a bunch of ads for funeral services and life insurance? FFFFFUUUUUU
*ARTILLERY STRIKE*
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Considering the fallback is to drive it just the way it's done every day today, I don't see that as the biggest problem.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
TU or Teknisk Ukeblad is litterly Technical Week Magazine, a 150+ year old magazine owned by three engineer unions and distributed to their members and other subscribers. As most news outlets, they have a web page with a video section with video extending their written articles. They are not a TV Station.
What costs more? 1MW jamming gear, or HARM missiles?
As a former M1A1 tank driver I would not want this system at all. I don't need something extra that can go wrong and leave me blind at the wrong time. Imagine yanking all that crap off just to be able to see again. Give it to the commander and let him play with the toy but he'll set it aside I'm sure.
Tanks are not all that hard to navigate. Plus you're not suppose to get tanks into positions where you have those sorts of problems. If you do then you have the rest of your platoon to help be your eyes. As well as "scratch your back" if you need it.
It is not just the BMDs — there is a paradropping church in Russia's arsenal...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
srsly, who even allows such headlines through?
Why sit in that tank at all? Turn the tank into an unmanned drone and sit in the safety of your own gamers man-cave.
The jamming gear, likely by an order of magnitude or two.
..don't panic
I don't think combat is the primary concern of this project, but rater safe training and operation of these vehicles here home in Norway where I believe all our tanks are. A few years ago, a tank drove off the road during training mid winter and sank with the operators in a march, and to make sure incidens like that doesn't happen is probably why they are using software and hardware of this class and with this time frame instead of using millions on combat focused systems.
I doubt its just for training. You have to train the way you fight. You can't expect crews to use oculus during training and then switch to small metal ports during battle.
What costs more? 1MW jamming gear, or HARM missiles?
Losing costs more than either.
And that it's a prototype. It doesn't make much sense to build the hardened version before you've tested that the concept works.
They should just solve all wars and conflicts with Dance Dance Revolution. I've been saying it for years. That or Starcraft II if it's a korean conflict.
It's a bit more like "warifying gamefare"
What do nuclear reactors have to do with jamming?
RF jamming just means transmitting noise on certain frequencies, or on all frequencies, or on all frequencies except the ones you plan to use.
Frequencies, antennas, transmitters, and locations are relevant. How it's powered is not relevant.
I'm fairly certain a TANK would be a metal box that would block out most RF jamming.
If I wanted to disrupt this, I would use a rifle (or shrapnel) to take out the cameras.
Just what you don't want in the heat of battle: friend requests from Zuck
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Expect this to end as soon as Suckerberg finds-out. As he said, he destroyed Oculus just to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Keeping it out of the hands of professional murderers like this is exactly the reason he destroyed that company, and thus the device. He knew the Republicans would steal it and try to use it to kill. This is what their kind always does with new technology. They want to see how it can be used to murder people. Hopefully, he'll be successful in killing Oculus to prevent the death of thousands or more people.
I wanna play!
If I remember right, like the F-22 helmet it's actually radar stealthed as well. A 'big' dome is a good target for radar and the canopy is at least somewhat transparent to radar.
I don't read AC A human right
In this day and age, who on earth would want to be a soldier in a tank?
The number of weapons available that can kill you in a very nasty manner with almost no chance of survival is so high that you would have to be suicidal to volunteer for tank duties.
Tanks are vulnerable.
"you are a pretty bright light for HARM missiles or other radar-seeking technology"
Well, it's a good thing that no bad people deliberately set themselves up amongst civilian infrastructure or on hospitals, etc...
Sigh, you guys are really daft. The whole idea with the article was that the system was cheap as shit. There are already systems available but they are much more expensive... Because they are ready for "primetime", this system is very far from ready to use so using price as a strong point is just stupid! Is what Anon is trying to say.
Kinda philosophical question. Yes, I guess it would be better if _everyone_ was far far away from any weapon of war. But as a more realistic approach it seems pretty much every coutry should keep some kind of an army, to create some kind of a barrier between their population and possible enemies who might want to force their will upon the people. As far as tanks go, the driver is usually inside the tank. This is for a couple of simple reasons. First reason is the fact that tanks are generally build so that the controls are on the inside. It's easier to reach them when you are not far far away. The other reason is the tank actually gives a pretty good cover, you know, being a tank.
And yeah, I know what you really mean. That doesn't matter for norway, because they don't go around the globe killing freedom fighters. If their tank drivers die, it will be in a defensive war, and you don't need to avoid casualties in those as much, because the home fronts support is pretty much a given. Driving a tank isn't too hard, norway will run out of tanks well before people to drive them. Also, in general, norway isn't too well suited for tank warfare geographically anyways.
It's not gamification until the tank crew scores points by doing their job.
Unless you've tried it, how can you judge it?