US Army To Invest $50 Million In Game Development [Slashdot]

[DP ServBot]

$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."http://games.slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rss&op=image&style=h0&sid=08/11/24/0827201 (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/24/0827201&from=rss)
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[heybtbm]

The Army has had similar training "games" since the 1980's. My Dad used to be an Army tank commander who trained tank crews back in the day. I remember one of the coolest tools was this tank simulator that would include the whole tank crew (driving, shooting, navigating, etc.). They would let the kids try it out from time to time. It was a pretty advanced "game" for the early 80's. IIRC it was a combination of CG and matte paintings set inside a real tank.

[MrSparkle]

*recalls other similar efforts*

that light gun game for snes which is one of the rarest snes things you can hope to find has an m16 light gun which is pretty badass

americas army which was glorified counterstrike run by the army to make you think, "SHIT, WAR IS LIKE COUNTERSTRIKE, AND I LOVE COUNTERSTRIKE SIGN ME UP!"

basically it sounds like the army wants battlefield 2 with additional replay support. Congrats to me for saving them $50 million on development.

[roushimsx]

americas army which was glorified counterstrike run by the army to make you think, "SHIT, WAR IS LIKE COUNTERSTRIKE, AND I LOVE COUNTERSTRIKE SIGN ME UP!"

America's Army was pretty awesome and had a ton of key differences from Counter Strike that put off a lot of people. You know, like the mandatory training sessions (rifle range, the eventual medical school, special forces school, sniper school, etc) that people bitched and griped about. Oddly enough, I found the first aid classes in the game to be pretty damn well done. Really informative for as short as they were and not at all painful. Good stuff.

Considering the money for it had been diverted from the recruiting budget anyway, it's not like it cost the tax payers anything. That money would have been spent on yet more shitty commercials or obnoxious "I'M DOING MY PART!" posters. At least this way they were able to kick out a pretty effective piece of part propaganda, part infotainment.

Still, nothing tops Bohemia Interactive's advancements to Operation Flashpoint. They licensed Virtual Battlespace to a variety of military organizations throughout the world (including the USMC) and that shit was the bee's knees. Everything that rocked about Operation Flashpoint ratcheted up a few notches.

If you want to see a baddass application of VBS2, check out Laser Shot (http://www.lasershot.com/). Extremely fun stuff.

Can't wait to see what becomes of the Army's latest project.

[Leo_A]

Speaking of military simulators, these are my favorite kind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Abb9dSlygE

Miniature models with a camera that travels across the landscape, with the images displayed on the screen for the pilot. I've been fascinated with this RAF Jaguar simulator for many years.