Game Technology Helps Drive Military Training 127
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.'"
Low-budget Marine Corps (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Low-budget Marine Corps (Score:5, Interesting)
"Just think, one day, the R&D that Nintendo put into Wii bowling could end up influencing basic training [which includes how to kill people]"
Although I highly doubt a business would pass up the chance to get funding from the military, I would hope that a company that for the most part builds games for kids (or at least promotes "fun"), would decline working for the military in any regard, except to deviate away from phsyical combat. Maybe one day the wars could be settled with a good game of Guitar Hero...
However it could be argued that better killing skills leads to less fatalities and injuries, it still promotes taking, or imposing stuff by force, and all that goes along with that.
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Waggle M16 to respawn.
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The majority of technological advances have, historically, been tied to the military, be they medical, computer, or physical. Denying this is to say "hi, I'm a fucking retard."
Re:Low-budget Marine Corps (Score:5, Informative)
Actually in basic we had a SNES with a training game on it in the barracks [siliconera.com]. 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.
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Noting from the comment on that page, that the game did not come with the gun itself.
I tried to find some screenshots, but my question is: were the targets human? or human in shape?
I have nothing against shooting games, or guns in general infact, but part of me disagrees with having a company like Nintendo promoting killing humans.
Shooting at ducks, aliens, mutants, circles and boxes, fine, thats just skill training and entertainment, shooting at human looking obj
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There is a huge difference between being accurate at a shooting range, and accurate in battle.
Snipers (as in the Hollywood glorified version) would probably be the only ones that would show signifigant skill improvement via a game such as this.
As far as efficient and also effective, combat simulation (ie: wandering around an actual building/area with weapons and
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Im not argueing against using computers/video games in training, only that a basic Duck Hunt style one really is not worth it, and the time spent doing that could be better applied. (given that this is during training, not leave/hours off)
A simple duck hunt style game would be effective if it was 180 or 360 degrees, but the Multipurpose Arcade Combat Simulator is just a single screen, and I would
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? Ive seen them all, and remember the episode, but not sure if thats it.
Woudlnt say im a trekky/treker either, but the show was good, so was Next Generation, but dont like any of the others.
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Shooting at ducks, aliens, mutants, circles and boxes, fine, thats just skill training and entertainment, shooting at human looking objects, is something else, and rather sociopathic.
A friend of mine has an old stand-up machine of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogan's_Alley_(arcade_game) [wikipedia.org]
So Nintendo must be pretty sociopathic. I don't see the problem as just about every first-person shooter uses human, or human-like models. Counter-Strike, Quake, Halo, Call of Duty, BF1942, and countless others.
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The difference is, im not training to then proceed into reality and actually carry out what I played in the game.
There's a difference between "ahaha fucker I got you!" and "shit, I should try that sometime!"
Re:Low-budget Marine Corps (Score:4, Interesting)
Nintendo, as a post-war japanese company subscribes fairly heavily in the "war is bad: look what it does" philosophy. In fact, many have commented that Japan's seemingly stratospheric lead in advanced tech research, with it being responsible for a disproportionate number of advances in many tech fields, like video games, mobile phones, digital cameras, hi-fis, walkmans etc. probably owes a good deal to the fact that Japan's greatest minds are busy cracking out new video games and stereo players, rather than, as is the case in Western countries, designing new fighter jets or laser weapons.
Japan is a fairly pacifist nation, and that's a good thing. Retaining the ability to go to war if you are threatened = good.
Having 65% of the worlds aircraft carriers endlessly on patrol/exercise just-in-case as a backup to make sure no uppity neighbours say no to a new trade deal = bad.
Think I prefer the Japanese "fun".
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*as a student of archaeology my definition of 'recent' may differ from yours
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Meh, it's back to one now, no soldiers at all except defence ones.
What country needs more? I hear justifications for the US having a navy that could take on the rest of the entire planet and still win as being "needed to patrol the seas for piracy", much like the British Empire's Navy was before WW2.
Funny, I thought all Nations cou
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Japan is a fairly "pacificist" nation because it enjoys the full protection of the United States and has nothing to gain from any form of military aggression. Tens of thousands of American troops are stationed there. American patriot missile batteries defend them from possible ballistic missile attacks. American fighters patrol their skies and prepar
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What I meant was Japan's society; it's pro-death penalty, yet strangely fairly anti-war. My point stands though. The US Navy has 65% of the worlds aircraft carriers!! They could take on th
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You seem to look at it as if the target is just pixels in a game, don't forget that the "enemies" are humans too, fighting for the same reason "we" are, sometimes those reasons are lies and misconceptions.
So by your mode of thought, they have just as much right to anhilate us and return home 'safely'.
Can you not see how this perpetuates this never ending battle? You sit down with one of our soldiers, then sit down with one of theirs, they are basically the same pe
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The necessity for improvement of weaponry and defenses may be a perpetual struggle, and as much as it would be nice to just sit everyone down and draw a line at how far we go, you can't do that. If you do that, the first party to break the "rules" to get an advantage is going to have an advantage. You can't artifically limit your options when fighting a war, and with that thought in mind, you need to explore every advantage you can.
So why is there a Geneva convention? Why doesn't everyone just nuke eac
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Why doesn't everyone just nuke each other, if you have to maximize efficiency in order to achieve the win?
Reprisal.
As "effective" as the torture of detainees may be, it has dealt a blow to the support-base of the US war in Iraq.
I think you put the scare-quotes in the wrong place. This is a largely manufactured controversy. Yes, the techniques used were questionable, but waterboarding being called "torture" is seriously stretching it, given what other regimes in the not-so-distant-past have employed to get information out of captives.
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I think if you asked a General, they'd tell you if forced to choose, they'd like a good maim.
I'm splitting hairs here (but this is
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If someone loses a leg, but lives, they not only allow for situations as you stated, but they go home, and for the rest of their life are an advertisement for "how we lost the battle". Demoralization with linger.
Plus outright killing people provokes a more pro-active response from the civilians/other soldiers, "fuck you mother fucker die!!!"... but injuries provoke t
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Although I highly doubt a business would pass up the chance to get funding from the military, I would hope that a company that for the most part builds games for kids (or at least promotes "fun"), would decline working for the military in any regard, except to deviate away from phsyical combat. Maybe one day the wars could be settled with a good game of Guitar Hero
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The civilian/military casualties ratio has been increasing for the last 100 years, AFAIR.
Weaponeer 2000 (Score:5, Interesting)
You basically have actual M-16's, M-4's, 240-B's, M-249's and 50 cals hooked up to the system. When you fire, the weapon shoots a laser to the screen in front of you. (It's a really big projector screen). You have different scenes (one was an oil-refinery scene of some kind, and the other was an urban setting) where you have to engage the enemy.
The graphics aren't all that great, but it's still pretty fun. I wanted to hook up Halo or GoW to that big-ass screen. That would have been pretty sweet.
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A DoD contractor I worked for last year was doing some training for a group of Rangers. One of them told me they've used ShooterReady [shooteready.com] in part of their training.
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Signs of our times... Not saying it's good or bad, but things are definitely not the same. Perhaps the more cutthroat competition in entertainment is stimulating better innovations than can come out of a world of no-bid or rigged contracts.
Ok wait (Score:4, Funny)
Heh, I can see the press release now. (Score:3, Funny)
Scalpels not swords (Score:5, Insightful)
Just think, one day, the R&D that Nintendo put into Wii bowling could end up influencing basic training.
Are we suppose to be proud or excited by this? Arguably the military is one of the few things left in the US that works well. Get back to me when the government puts a decent size fraction of what they spend on the military into energy research, healthcare, education and career retraining. I'll be thrilled when Wii research ends up in a surgeon's hands than an Air Force cadet.
Re:Scalpels not swords (Score:5, Interesting)
The Intestate highway system was not sold to Congress as a vital transportation network, but rather as a defense system that could be used to truck around ICBMs to shoot at the ruskies.
The foundations of the Internet were all funded out of DARPA research as ways to communicate during wars, where communication links might be severed and need to be routed around.
Many medical advancements have originated from the efforts to stitch people back together during wars.
If you look at how much money the US spends on being ready to kill, compared to how much it spends being ready to compete, it's no surprise why there's all this technology spilling from the military. They're the only ones being funded because fear results in funding.
If we poured money into education, transportation, information technology, health, etc, we'd see significant paybacks from those investments too. But Americans only think they're getting their money's worth when fear is involved. They haven't quite figured out why Pentagon toilet seats costs $10,000.
I don't think Republicans are entirely to blame, they've just corned the market on fear and have become great at selling it to the "I'll pay you to scare me" American public. Democrats also enjoy the funding that comes with fear, making it a key issue both sides can agree on.
Obama's Apple, McCain's Microsoft: the Politics of Tech [roughlydrafted.com]
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In the US, money gets spent on fear.
Your point is well taken and many more examples could be offered - e.g. NASA, space race with Soviets, etc. I think we agree that giving the military buckets of money and being satisfied with whatever technology filters out accidentally into the commercial arena ten years after the fact isn't the most productive use of our national treasure.
I am too much of cynic to become overly optimistic but it would be great if a certain candidate's message of hope (as opposed
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Wow, your charity at not ENTIRELY blaming Republicans is admirable.
Perhaps the idea that Dems are just as adept at selling different 'scare stories' is "An Inconvenient Truth"?
Republicans have sold security fears for decades.
Dems have tended to prefer to sell class envy, but they haven't shied away from scare stories - for the last 30 years, focussed on environmental chicken littling.
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Reasonably intelligent people who are aware of the facts don't doubt that climate change should be addressed, but also know that Iraq had nothing to do with global terrorism, Al Qaeda, or WMDs.
Conversely, the US has spent trillions on sending 4,000 soldiers to die in the sand, while officially having spent very little to do anything about climate change other than pay conservative think tanks to come up with "perhaps nothing is ha
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That's supposed to be persuasive?
Please note a couple of additional points:
- there is a significant number of people who, while recognizing that the climate is changing, don't accept that this logically proves this change is anthropogenic, alterable on a human scale, nor even necessarily bad in the largest view. It's warming? I can throw chart after chart of paleoclimatological data at you that shows that the BULK of e
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Say what?
Trillions of dollars wasted, over a million innocent Iraqis dead, over 5 million refugees forced from their homes, thousands imprisoned and tortured without trial, a puppet regime that will fall the moment the US withdraws and more people hating the US than ever. You might even call it a "cakewalk." I wouldn't, but it sounds like we're not on the same page.
Then there's the thousands of dead US soldiers, tens of thousa
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Exaggerate much?
He isn't exaggerating much, if at all. The budget numbers are always cooked, never more so than by this president. One of the biggest games played is to throw in entitlement programs like social security and medicare into the numbers when it is convenient and leave them out when it isn't. When you look at discretionary spending, it is MORE than 50%. From the article that you cited:
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Fine, if it makes you feel better. I guess he didn't have time to run it past the proof readers before posting. Most people could tell from the context of the discussion what he meant and it in no way diminishes his point.
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I guess he didn't have time to run it past the proof readers before posting.
That's just the thing. Would he accept such a statement about lack of proofreading from Bush about the WMD intelligence? I doubt it. By using crappy figures, emotional rhetoric, and exaggerations, he does a disservice to the point of view he would like to support.
Let's take his rape accusation. I found some figures (I found them here [findarticles.com]) that indicate 10% - 23% is a more realistic number. Now, that number is staggering. It's sickening. It's worthy of outrage. But it's significantly less than his num
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Well I am guessing that you didn't mean to equate some guy writing a quick post on Slashdot to someone who had the entire machinery of the federal government at his disposal. It seems the latter was more of case of Bush's willful rejection of fa
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So, I guess this is why it's always best to cite your sources. It's a small but very significant step from "a reliable source said 1/3" to "some op-ed piece in the NYT said 'nearl
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This doesn't make it ok of course, but to put it into context here are the statistics for colleges, which are more-or-less the same age group as people in the military:
http://abacus.bates.edu/admin/offices/scs/salt7.html [bates.edu]
* One out of four women will be sexually assaulted on a college campus.
* One out of eight women will be raped while in college.
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And Interest on debt doesn't count at all in your pie chart? Well, I'm glad to see that inste
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Veteran's benefits are 2.5%, so go ahead and add it to the 19% and see how close that gets you to "over half" of the federal budget.
Social Security isn't part of taxes collected? You know as well as I that the SS moneys go right into the general fund and are spent. That is why there is no trust fund, and why SS is headed for fiduciary ruin
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http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ [usgovernmentspending.com]
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No matter how much is wasted, or goes towards ineffective technology, they will revieve even more money the next year until something comes of it.
And a defeat of one side, is a victory for the other, even if the defeated spent more money on their military, the victorious side will spend more to assimilate their technology and strategies (see WW2), so as to not be outdone by a poorer country (see Vietnam). Even a war with
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Re:Scalpels not swords (Score:5, Insightful)
From the post above, it sounds like someone has been drinking the daily kos cool aide by the gallon. First, get things straight. The US military works well, very very very well. So well that the whole world has been leaning on the US for military support and protection for the past 60 years. This includes conflicts right there on European soil (Bosnia, reference Srebrenica), and trying to clean up the mess caused by European colonials in Africa, who just packed up shop and said "oh well, not our problem".
The US military destroyed the Iraqi army in less than a week. This is a fact. The botched occupation was not a military plan, but a civilian leadership fiasco. The Bush administration had some twisted day dream that the rest of the world would donate troops and supply to bring democracy to Iraq, and the Bush administration was dead wrong, hence the catastrophe in Iraq. Its not a lack of military power, but a lack of political resolve. I guess you fail to see that, but since I'm talking truths and your playing to anti US sentiment, you'll get modded +5 insightful, and I'll get modded troll/flamebait.
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So since you were modded +5 insightful as well, does that mean that you are playing to the anti-anti-US sentiment?
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Say what?...it sounds like we're not on the same page.
It seems to me we are very much on the same page.
Perhaps it was poorly phrased but what I meant by the military working well is that it performs its function superbly, regardlessly of the dubious and sometimes obscene missions it is given and the costs involved. Sadly, if you were to take a poll of the one thing the world thinks America currently excels at it would almost certainly be military related. Well, maybe prison technology. Certainly no
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> Say what?
> Trillions of dollars wasted, over a million innocent Iraqis dead,...
Depends on how you define "works well". From a USA perspective, IIRC, the invasion went quite well, same as in the first Iraq war (to 'liberate' Kuwait). However the USA failed to "win the peace", and the locals suffered disproportionately.
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They already do spend a "decent size fraction" on the things you mention:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ [usgovernmentspending.com]
* Military spending: $730.8 billion
* Education spending: $848.2 billion
* Health care spending: $925.0 billion
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Well, the government decides where it goes but it was your money before you payed tax.
And you (well, in theory at least) get to decide who gets to be "the government", so.....
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Um, humans like to blow stuff up/kill things far more often than healing/saving them. That side, the civil war surgeon's game where y
Advanced Tactics (Score:3, Funny)
I can just see it now: (Score:1)
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Full Circle (Score:1)
VBS / ArmA (Score:5, Informative)
Brooks on kill-bots (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.singinst.org/media/singularitysummit2007 [singinst.org]
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/people-blog/?p=207 [acceleratingfuture.com]
That transcript for the talk doesn't including the question and answer session, so I'll transcribe it here:
The question is, can I talk about the inspiration for the user interface on the combat robot?
Yes, on the combat robot, we started out with engineers designing it, very expensive, joysticks with force reflecting, we put it out in the field, the kids out in the field, the 19 year old started doing *bang* *bang* *bang* pulse width modulation with their hands, umm, we changed it then to a game controller and now the 19 year olds in Iraq pick it up, zero training, know what to do.
Great.
[question about flat worms, etc]
[different question about humans merging with ai, losing emotions, etc]
[question about research funding]
The question is, I used to talk about insect level intelligence, what's my attitude to that.. well, I've got 3 million robots out in people's homes with insect level intelligence. It's a real commercial success. But it doesn't mean we should stick with just that. Some of the principles from that we've been using in these humanoid robots and I was trying to explore a different set of space, but really, I tend to think that, humans are just bit insects. [laughter] Ha ha, we're not as smart as we like to think we are. I still believe that, at its core.
The question, is about [soldiers] becoming emotionally attached to the robots and has that caused us to rethink at all. No, we haven't done that in the military space, but in the home space we've seen people getting attached.. there's a whole set of third party industry making clothes for roombas, there are skins for roombas that you can get, there's some web sites, so I think those, ya know, we'll have Facebook for robots [laughter] I mean, there really is part of this attachment that's an interesting phenomena going on there. Sherry Turpils looked at it with Furbies a lot. There's a lot of projection onto these devices which they don't really deserve from a rational point of view. But we're not rational beings.
The question is, there have been reports of packbots being equipped with machine guns and what do you do worrying about friendly fire. Actually, that's not true, none of the packbots have had a machinegun, the Talon from Foster Miller has had a weapon on it,
all with safety circuit and a human in the loop. I think it is an interesting question, when (if ever) do we want to allow robots to have independent targeting authority. I think now is the time to act. There's a bunch of ethics conferences coming up in the next year. I think its time to put this into the Geneva Conventions - some governments do go along with the Geneva Conventions - and [laughter] I think its time to think about that. Absolutely.
[Audience member asks a follow-up:] You said "some governments" follow the Geneva Conventions, but apparently not that you've done some work for. Is it a good idea for you to be developing AI and robotics for the US government? and, umm, in my mind, that could lead to some of the worst nightmare scenarios and I'm wondering how, ya know, what your thoughts are on mitigating against...
Yeah, I think that, in a sense is nothing to do with AI, that's been a question which has faced scientists in the past since the time of Da vinci, who was completely funded by military, doing military work for his patrons. So that's an issue that scientists have had to deal with for hundreds of years. Independently, of AI. And I think it is a big responsibility of scientists to worry about controls of how things are used and I think, actually, the Geneva Conventions have been a good way of
Troop proofing... (Score:4, Funny)
Gyrobot Death Squad (Score:1)
While I am no expert on this or any topic for that matter. I highly doubt that this situation is anywhere close to being in the realm of possibilities imagined when Nintendo created the Wii or for that matter when they brought out the NES(in all its Gyrobot glory).
This is news? (Score:1)
Whatever works (Score:2, Insightful)
If the military finds that incorporating video game technology into weapons will make them more deadly, more reliable, and more accurate in the hands of today's service members, then the money is well spent. We can even use technologies and ideas from VG's to create less collateral damage in the process - precision warfare is crucial on today's battlefield.
Our guys with BOG (boots on ground) don't need this to be effective, but if it helps u
It might work for some stuff (Score:2)
A huge problem is that young psyched up soldiers go crazy with boredom and start getting lax. A huge percentage of casua
Old news (Score:5, Interesting)
He asked, "What are you looking at?"
They replied, almost in unison, "A tanker."
He ended up driving a tank to Baghdad with the elite 3rd Squadron of the 7th Cavalry, and fought in the only force-on-force tank battle of the war at Objective Montgomery (out near the airport).
America's Army anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Major Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
The tactics you use to play a game like Counter-Strike (a cooperative military FPS) would be very different if you only got one life every 24 hours.
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Also, you don't have to deal with things like gore when you see your pal missing a part of his face and lying face down in a pool of blood.
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Recruiting Poster (Score:2)
Uhhh... 1980 called, they want their news back (Score:2, Interesting)
In 1980 there was this little Atari game called Battlezone, where you'd drive around in a tank, blowing shit up.
The army commissioned Atari to produce a special simulator based on Battlezone, called the Bradley Trainer (named after Bradley tanks). It was built into a high-end arcade cabinet, with a fancy controller that became the Star Wars flight yoke a few years later.
The army has been using gaming tech since video gaming was bo
Missing a very important point (Score:1)
$75,000 wiimote? (Score:2)
And maybe we could get them for our own systems!
Let's pee ourselves when they say "Wii"! (Score:2)
'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.'"
I think they are using every modern gaming controller for research these days. I've seen several Xbox 360 controllers controlling things on Futureweapons lately.
Quite honestly, it seems like it would be easier and less trouble to just hack together some accelerometers and bluetooth circuits and go from there instead of trying to build things around the Wii controller-- but it's not my project.
For all the people jabbering about Nintendo doing development for US war efforts, don't count on it any time soon.
Makes sense (Score:2)
So it makes sense to use the same interface you've been using all your youth years. I'd stick with the good old ASDW and mouse, over any other if you ask me.
The world cyber games champion will be tomorrow's Rambo, so don't mess with her/him.
Boom Headshot (Score:2)
or:
Boom Headshot [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/v/olm7xC-gBMY&hl=en [youtube.com]