US Military Ramps Up Stinky VR Training 133
HarrisonSilp writes "CNN.com has a story regarding the U.S. Military's recent foray into using Virtual Reality as a training method. Being developed by Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), they call it Mission Rehearsal Exercise or MRE for short, and it is a most impressive setup. 'The 5-minute scenario is projected onto a 150-degree movie screen, complete with 10.2-channel audio that creates floor-shaking sound effects. To enhance the sense of reality, smells including burned charcoal can be pumped into the room.' It almost makes me want to write off college and join the army..."
Wow, it's just like (Score:1)
10.2 sound?? (Score:1)
Re:10.2 sound?? (Score:1)
5.1 is 5 channels plus 100Hz right?
no
- 5.1 = five channels plus a sub channel
- 10.2 = twice as good, clearly.
Tom.p.s. I can emit pellets...
Re:10.2 sound?? (Score:1)
MRE? (Score:1)
Re:MRE? (Score:1)
Re:MRE? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:MRE? (Score:1)
Re:MRE? (Score:2)
Re:MRE? (Score:1)
Re:MRE? (Score:1)
Re:MRE? (Score:2)
No kidding. I gave my dog an MRE sausage once. He approached it excitedly, then stopped, froze, put his tail between his legs and backed slowly away. No kidding.
And, back then at least, the MRE's were packaged in Cadillac MI, where, I believe, there are a lot of pet food processing plants...
Re:MRE? (Score:1)
Funny... I always thought MRE stood for Meals Rarely Edible. Of course, I understand you can do some cool things with the chemical-based food warmers that come in the new ones...
Not that new (Score:2, Informative)
Mostly they focus on the visual data in all of the simulations because it helps the most. This is an interesting new thing, but its really only an incremental improvement, considering how advanced the military simulations already are.
Re:Not that new (Score:1)
Like, "technology has reached the needed level of realism", or something...
Yeah, I found this old link [wired.com]... Seems like the old memory is still functional.
5 minutes? (Score:1)
What if you don't "secure the assembly area" within your alotted five minutes? Do you have to pay for another ticket? Sorry, your five minutes are up. Please put all trash in the designated recepticles on the way to the exits.
Nope. (Score:2)
When applied to a combat situation, this can mean making the body smell, see, and hear things that they would encounter in combat, to prepare their senses for the real thing.
"VR" does not mean "Computer-generated imagery & feelings hacked directly into your brainstem", nor does it have to mean "3d generated graphics with stereoscopic vision and a powerglove".
Even though said soldier obviously KNOWS it's not real, the assault on his senses goes a long way to preparing him for the real thing. That's the point.
Re:Nope. (Score:1)
What's missing from your definition of virtual reality is interaction. An experience may be totally emersive, and it may be an assault on the senses, but so are many things Hollywood puts out. Like you said, the soldier knows it's not real. Because you can touch and change reality. You actually have a reason to give a damn. Otherwise this is just a training film someone forced you to sit through.
Add interaction, and give the person a reason to care about the situation and the ability to make decisions that affect it's outcome, THEN you have something that approaches reality. Otherwise, it's a glorified movie that has no place as a story on Slashdot. Hell, I've got some charcoal. I should burn some and play video games and submit a story to Slashdot about my home VR system.
Re:Nope. (Score:2)
Marketing... (Score:5, Funny)
'Army of One' is referring more and more to the average IQ of new recruits, not the sense of fellowship. (This isn't an attack at the military, just an observation about the people I know who have signed up in the last 2 years.)
Re:Marketing... (Score:1)
This reminds me so much of my brother... sort of. He graduated in the top 10% of his class; in the clubs NHS, APE, SADD, etc, etc. He went on to admit to everyone his cocaine addiction, went to rehab, 6 months later enlisted.
He went to college after 4 years while staying reserved and is now JAG, funny stuff if you ask me.
US DECLARES WAR!!!! (Score:1)
[OT] 'Army of One' (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the Army is still of the mindset that quantity is better than quality and has repeatedly lowered standards to pump up the numbers. Intelligence/Education is just one of the many victims of this mindset. This, at a time when the tasks of the average soldier are becoming increasingly more complex, both technologically and politically. Soldiers can no longer just be considered automotons that mindlessly follow orders... they have to be aware of the ramifications their actions can have. IE: How does a soldier fix the wireless networks of a group of tanks when his MOS is for radio communications? How does a soldier respond when confronted by the media? I hope the Army learns quickly, but history indicates otherwise.
You want VR? (Score:1, Funny)
They go great with weed too.
What a waste of money! (Score:2, Funny)
Doom sure taught the columbine kids right? (Score:1)
Doh! Missed the last line... (Score:3, Insightful)
And boot camp is for...?
Combat training is for...?
SEAL, Munitions, Howitzer, Tank and Sharpshooter training is for...?
This dude deserves a "DUH!" award, if there was one.
Remember those lines from G.I. Jane:
Nurse: "Why are you doing this?"
Jane: "Do you ask that of all the men?"
N: "Yes"
J: "And what do they answer?"
N: "I get to blow shit up."
Hell, Rogue Spear and Q3 mods provide enough realism...just add it to the VR and several "pressure cuffs" and "shock suits" to simulate damage.
Oh, well, I suppose every little bit helps.
Re:Doh! Missed the last line... (Score:2, Insightful)
Flight simulation is successful because the cockpit is a limited environment anyway; you have a set of controls, a restricted viewing area, and a relatively low number of possible situational variables. The stress of real conflict will still be missing, but you don't have to worry about the enemy ducking into a building, or having to carry a wounded squad member, or having your overtaxed weapon seize. But even flight simulation often degenerates into a protocol exam, because pilots are so highly-trained to begin with that much of what they practice in simulation has already been learned in the classroom and in the cockpit.
But I digress. My point is that if simulation cannot accurately simulate, it doesn't matter if it's less costly. Real excercises, while not perfect, are always more realistic, and if your soldiers are 1% more prepared for The Real Thing than the investment is justified.
Re:Doh! Missed the last line... (Score:1)
Re:Doh! Missed the last line... (Score:4, Informative)
Instilling discipline, basic tactics, and getting recruits to understand just how much punishment their bodies can take.
SEAL, Munitions, Howitzer, Tank and Sharpshooter training is for...?
Small unit tactics, basic skills.
This dude deserves a "DUH!" award, if there was one.
What "this dude" is talking about when he refers to rehearsals is mission specific rehearsals. A unit rehearses a mission as much as possible so that people know their jobs and everyone else's and the mission as well as possible. The examples YOU cited are more general tactics and skills training.
Cool...but now what? (Score:1)
Official Announcement & Extra Reading (Score:4, Informative)
If you're interested in the AI type stuff behind virtual/synthetic elements that would go along with this sort of thing, check out some SOAR/ASTT documents [isi.edu].
VR EH! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:VR EH! (Score:2)
This is Nothing New (Score:1)
Re:This is Nothing New (Score:1)
Re:This is Nothing New (Score:1)
In response to lagging enrollment (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In response to lagging enrollment (Score:2)
Also Navy ROTC and Civil Air Patrol is using MS Flight Sim 2000 for traning.
Re:In response to lagging enrollment (Score:1)
As a US Army Veteran (Score:1)
You're about as likely to see this system in your time in, as you are to get struck by lightning AND win the lottery.
Silly Army.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Silly Army.... (Score:2)
Re:Silly Army.... (Score:2)
I really hate to break this to you, but $45 million (are you sure you didn't meanb $45 billion?) isn't all that much. It's a fairly large powerball jackpot (but by no means huge), and a rounding error for Microsoft and several other large companies.
The military is willing to dump $45 million into things like this because a) one of them might pay off, and b) even if there is no direct payoff, things are learned that may be used later.
One only needs to look at the history of scientific development to realize that sometimes things that don't make sense need to be funded. How many technological advances of today are dependant upon scientific discoveries made years before they were considered useful? A lot. A simple example is anything that works on electricity. It took nearly 40 years from the first experiments by Michael Faraday in the generation of electricity before anyone found any real method of production, and over a century from Franklin's first investigation to real use.
Just because something doesn't have a use now, doesn't mean that knowledge gained isn't valuable. And since the military has the budget to fund things that no one else can, they tend to do so.
As to the reason the Marines do so much better than the Army with so much less has a lot to do with the training, and 'winnowing' process done on recruits. Say what you want about methods, the most severe of the branches of the service also seems to produce the most effective soldiers.
another thought (Score:1)
flight sims (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm talking about flight simulators. They perfectly model the inside of a cockpit, hook the thing up to hydraulics and have an entire room full of minicomputers to drive the simulation with SGI Onyx machines for modeling the landscape and entities. The scenery is provided by 8 projectors which display the surroundings on a curved reflective screen just outside cockpit windows.
These multi-million dollar machines are quite impressive definitely a lot more fun than X-Plane [x-plane.com]. Machines at separate military bases can even be linked up together for the ultimate multiplayer flight sim.
Getting to check one of these out has definitely been one of the highlights of my life as a geek. I decided that being a systems programmer / maintainer or developer for flight simulator could be a very entertaining use of my future career. I already have the avionics background, I would just need the CS degree and maybe a class or two at Embry-Riddle...
Re:flight sims (Score:4, Funny)
Re:flight sims (Score:2)
Re:flight sims (Score:2)
I would imagine you have to have a strong background or degree in some aerospace field or two or three first. (Avionics, flight theory, possibly even simulation itself is a degree.) Then, you need to know how to program, probably in a few different languages and quite possibly on several platforms applicable to flight sims.
Then, you need to get in with a company that actually designs, builds, and maintains the flight sims themselves. If memory serves correct, that would be Lockheed/Martin on this base, but it wouldn't surprise me much to hear that Boeing and TRW also get in on it.
Very occasionally, the programmers for the flight sims here stop by our shop to use one of our test benches to have an accurate benchmark of what our avionics test station does vs. what their program is doing. Next time they stop in, (and it's possible they might not) I plan on asking them what I would need to do to be a flight sim programmer. If you give me your email address, I can write it down and give you the scoop.
Come to think it it, there might be some information regarding this on the web. I'll submit this comment and check it out.
Re:flight sims (Score:2)
Evans and Sutherland has been in the flight business for years. Granted, they aren't doing so hot right now.. *shrug* They are heavily in to internships and have great college recruiting. Harmony is the lead product (http://www.es.com/products/image+generators/harm
Frij
*lowly IT worker for E&S
Personal Experience with Military Flight Sims (Score:2)
Because I have this experience, I'd like to throw in a few considerations to this discussion.
The military pays LOTS of money to get these simulators as close to reality as possible. I know - my job was to verify that they fly just like the airplane. We would spend a week or more flying a sim in every conceivable situation, and comparing the results to real airplane data. But in the end, there were usually several significant areas where the sims just don't stack up. You cannot ever get a sim as good as the airplane, for a number of fundamental reasons, not the least of which is the lack of true G-forces.
In the end, the utility of ANY sim is determined mostly by understanding exactly where it is "mission representative" - where the model is representative of the actual mission the sim must model. Then, you carefully develop a syllabus, or training regime, that sidesteps those areas where the sim is not accurate. In some cases, this means not training certain tasks at all. In other cases, it means not using a sim in certain parts of the operating "envelope" while performing certain tasks.
Why is this important? Because it points out a key fact of simulation, not just flight simulation. Every simulation has its weaknesses. This does NOT mean the simulation is not useful - it simply means that you MUST understand those areas, and account for them while training. It is possible - and in fact done by the military - to take an individual with no actual experience in a certain type of airplane, spend two weeks training them in the simulator, then give them exactly two flights in the REAL airplane, before certifying them to solo in that airplane, and in fact start performing missions (not combat, of course, but that doesn't take long either).
Sims are tremendously useful. You can do things you'd never risk in real life, and do them over and over again until the reaction is automatic. You can do boring stuff, and do it many times. You can do things much faster - because you don't have to march, or drive, or fly to the operating area. And best of all, you can do it cheaply.
Sims are here to stay in the military. The most significant change in military procurement policy we're likely to see, worldwide, is the emphasis on interconnected simulations of all kinds for military-wide war gaming. We'll have better trained troops at all levels, at a lower cost than ever before.
Re:Personal Experience with Military Flight Sims (Score:2)
That pretty much matches up with my (admittedly limited) experience with flight sims. The ones we have here are for the C-130 (I forget which model), MH53-J, and the UH-1 Huey. The Huey, although much simpler and lacking hydraulics was incredibly fun and I got the hang of flying it almost right away, despite never having flown a helicopter before.
I was wondering, though, if you could give any insight as to how a regular geek (or military avionics geek, as I am) would go about eventually securing a job in programming and / or maintaining the program on one of these machines?
Smells (Score:5, Insightful)
That's lame. I experienced the smell of burned charcoal yesterday; it was the savory aroma of my Thanksgiving turkey cooking on the Weber grill. It gave me a nice warm fuzzy feeling.
If they really want to do combat simulation, they need to pump in the smell of cordite and napalm; the smell of rotting flesh on week-old corpses; the smell of truckfulls of men who haven't changed their clothes in five weeks; the smell of raw sewage and mud at the bottoms of trenches; the smell of mustard gas and burning tires; the smell of fear.
If they had this kind of realism, you'd stay safely in college.
Re:Smells (Score:1)
Join the Army? (Score:1)
Only if I get to keep the 150 degree screen and 10.2 system...
This seems like a waste of time (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be better to give the military guys paintball guns and let them reherse marine tactics on each other
Then give them a REAL virtual reality combat sim, not some fancy looking movie
I'm sorry but i looked at the picture and it looked like virtual cop 2 with a special movie screen
Ok maybe the screen is nice and its a decent similator, but tell me how do a group of soldiers actualy interact with it if its just a screen? At least if you wear a body suit and goggles you interact with it with your body so its actually realistic.
I dont know about this
Re:This seems like a waste of time (Score:1)
Re:This seems like a waste of time (Score:1)
and as for interaction, FAADS was using an interactive missile simulator at least as far back as '91 when I was in training... 35lb. fake Stinger sitting on my shoulder, wired to track the images on the screen... no smells, but I don't think we were missing much there
The point really is the political element (Score:2)
Yes folks, this is the new mode of warfare: spin control.
Re:This seems like a waste of time (Score:1)
In other news... (Score:3, Informative)
Yet another Army idea due for the scrapper after countless $$$ is spent. Remember how much they spent on Land Warrior before they canceled that?
Re:In other news... (Score:1)
MRE Acronym (Score:1)
the Rest of Them (Score:1)
Wow. Dream Park at last (Score:1)
I had given up on seeing this happen, as technology seemed to pass it by. But now it looks like Niven's work still holds water. And he pinpointed the military application.
Too bad Dream Park is out of print and hard to find. It's not on par with True Names [barnesandnoble.com], but is interesting from a 'how they saw it' viewpoint.
Re:Wow. Dream Park at last (Score:1)
online text of True Names (not sure how long this wil be up... so get it while its fresh)
True Names [tripod.com]
A fan supported Vernor Vinge web site [caltech.edu]
Vinge's site at SDSU (the miscelanious link at the bottom has the good stuff) [tor.com]
Some of his other books [amazon.com]
Bibliography [sfsite.com]
ok, thats enough for now... check google for more.
I recomend reading some of his stuff if you havn't already, some reminds you of all of the science foction you have read before, and some is just astounding. True Names is/was truely prophetic (check out when it was written, then compare to neuromancer).
Re:Wow. Dream Park at last (Score:1)
I know the story. Over the past few years Amazon.com has kept it for pre-sale, while Barnes & Nobel yanked it after the first or second publisher delay. They put it back up recently, and have stuck with the Dec 1 ship
"VR" in the army (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"VR" in the army (Score:1)
Acronym conflict? (Score:2)
Re:Acronym conflict? (Score:2)
Meals, Ready To Eat; Three Lies in One Sentence (Score:1)
Buzzwordish (Score:1)
I thought reality was something with which you could interact. Even a virtual reality must have some sort of I/O or it's just a movie, no matter how many gimmicks are thrown in. Smoke and mirrors may prepare soldiers for some of the confusion of being in combat, but the ability to think on one's feet and react to a rapidly changing scenario won't come from looking at a movie screen.
MREs? (Score:1)
Although I could see where people might get confused, especially with the smell of charcoal being pumped into the room.
(Incidentally, I've had MREs (the "edible" variety), and I actually don't think they're that bad, although that might be because I only had mess hall food for comparison at that point. ;) )
Re:MREs? (Score:1)
They're not that bad until you have to eat them 24/7. You spend the next month clearing them out of your system. :-/
Re:MREs? (Score:1)
Re:MREs? (Score:2)
Join the army? (Score:1)
Yeah, you do that. You'll probably end up as telecom guy or something like that, taken into account that you probably study something computer related. My guess is that you would never set your foot near any of these simulators.
Also, reading the article you get the impression it's mostly used as a tool in training commanding officers in decision making. Not the "regular" FPS you probably was hoping to play.
Re:Join the army? (Score:1)
This isn't going to help train anyone for hot contact. It can do a good job of training for more policelike things. This sounds like an upgraded and overpriced version of the police shoot/don't-shoot trainers.
but is it real (Score:1)
Why is military stuff always on slashdot? (Score:3, Interesting)
SLASHDOT:
From the demographics I once saw on the OSDN Website, it looks like the readers of slashdot are the type of people who are well-off, white, and fairly unlikely to ever experience war except through Quake, CNN, or Neal Stevenson Novels. Why are there always military articles posted on Slashdot?
Nerds and geeks will forever be the whimpering lapdogs that build the technology for killing! Racial military minority representation has risen from 14 percent in 1975 to 26 percent. This is faster than the rate that African Americans and Latinos have attained Internet access! Slashdot readers are smart, when will the poseur editors get over their military wanna-be aspirations?
Join the army? (Score:1)
So I want to understand this. You prefer to experience life through an interface to a localized digital sub-reality where you kill and destroy like a trained machine instead of breathing and eating here with us in meatspace where the blood, disease, and destruction come complete with a real olifactory track that would turn a decent being's stomach?
Philip K. Dick must be rolling over in his grave......
Please think about what you are saying. Even if it is said in jest, this kind of eager-beaver jingoism should be known and despised for what it is: abject worship of a system that actively promotes the death of your fellow human beings, "enemy" or not. If you don't value life, that's fine, but keep your adolescent, cold-blooded thoughts to your self.
Re:God, quake 3 is more realistic. (Score:1)
Did you even read before modding, sheesh!?
Did you even read my posting? Didja *see* the inclusion of text direct from the fucking article?
Obviously not. Because someone with an IQ above 50 would have read more than the subject line.
And, if whoever modded this down, obviously missed this:
But several online game reviews of "Real War" have criticized it for not being realistic enough, calling the movements jerky and cartoonish.
Which, if you have a sense of humor at all, will see that the paragraph below has direct linking to the paragraph above.
And in other news, Mr. Omer's next sim will be called "Real Congress", and get rave reviews for its accurate depiction.
Oh, well, not to worry. My other account hit the karma cap quite quickly, thank you.
Proving to me, and anyone else in the