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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."
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.
When you win a virtual war, you gain virtual territories and virtual natural resources. Also, in a virtual war, you don't have real innocent civilian casualties, which is what's so much fun with wars.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"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.
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
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.
Not by playing a video game, but maybe by having robots fighting other robots and destroying robot factories and unmanned bases etc. It could happen in a future full of unmanned war machines where it would be pointless for a person to try to fight a robot.
See also: Tiny robots in space :-P
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
If you can put a paint grenade on a tank you can also put a Molotov cocktail on the tank.
Tanks generally operate with infantry support; good luck with that.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
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!!!
Virtual war would only work if you had some way to have each side agree to abide by the outcome. However, countries are far more likely to go 'no, I do not agree to loose, now I will hurt you in the real world' and start bombing something.
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."
Not that much different then usual. A couple of paint bombs can cover up view ports just as easily.
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?
you sure you're not some guy writing anime?
the concept is old hat.. executing it cheaply isn't that old.
and in other game war news, swedes are using playstation controllers for artillery rapid control.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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.
Paint ballons may not stick to the glass, and require you to get close to throw.
A rifle can take out a camera at 300 yards.
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.
In which case you are no worse off than without the VR system.
Hey, look at all this radio traffic ....
It's command/ control traffic from their tanks to where the operators are
2 battles later
Hey! My tank isn't obeying me!
Neither is mine!
My God, they are headed rigCARRIER LOST
emt 377 emt 4
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...
It's not gamification until the tank crew scores points by doing their job.
Unless you've tried it, how can you judge it?