Comments on: From the Battlefield to the Screen: Virtualising Weaponry http://gamerlimit.com/2009/07/from-the-battlefield-to-the-screen/ Gamer Limit Thu, 24 May 2012 14:12:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: MBarnett http://gamerlimit.com/2009/07/from-the-battlefield-to-the-screen/#comment-17668 MBarnett Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:52:37 +0000 http://gamerlimit.com/?p=28754#comment-17668 jonondaspot, not sure where you are getting your info but, with all due respect sir, your assertions are just incorrect. As an engineer for the Army, I can tell you we are currenty using AA for numerous government applications so the Army is definately still looking at AA, VBS2, Real World, Crytek, Evolution, and other 3D engines as well. You mention the ATL (Adaptive Thinking and Leadership) application. This was one of the very first AA applications developed back in 2002 or 2003 and an excellent success story for training non-kinetic soft skills at the JFK Special Warfare Center. Since then, AA has been used for numerous projects for education, simulation, training, virtual equipment & weapons prototyping, and outreach. We have also successfully imported geospecific terrain from sources like DEM, DTED, GeoTiff and LADAR data for AA and even highly modified the lighting model to address dynamic light sources, time of day and night vision. This was all possible because the Army has the full source code for the Unreal Engine, and numerous commercial companies specializing in various disciplines have developed middleware technologies for Unreal in Artificial Intelligence, lighting, UI, physics, outdoor environments, terrain paging, inverse kinematics, human & vehicle simulation and others. We are able to readily acquire such technologies from the experts and later swap them out as something better comes along. Even the render engine is swappable. We are also developing with VBS2 which has a good set of out-of-the-box features and editing capabliity but not full source code access yet. Hopefully that will change in the near future so we can harness the full potential. I'm glad to be using both and look forward to what the industry will yield in the near future. The Army will continue to be flexible and use the right solution for the right task. Hope this helps. Thanks to James for the article and to everyone for your comments. jonondaspot, not sure where you are getting your info but, with all due respect sir, your assertions are just incorrect. As an engineer for the Army, I can tell you we are currenty using AA for numerous government applications so the Army is definately still looking at AA, VBS2, Real World, Crytek, Evolution, and other 3D engines as well. You mention the ATL (Adaptive Thinking and Leadership) application. This was one of the very first AA applications developed back in 2002 or 2003 and an excellent success story for training non-kinetic soft skills at the JFK Special Warfare Center. Since then, AA has been used for numerous projects for education, simulation, training, virtual equipment & weapons prototyping, and outreach. We have also successfully imported geospecific terrain from sources like DEM, DTED, GeoTiff and LADAR data for AA and even highly modified the lighting model to address dynamic light sources, time of day and night vision. This was all possible because the Army has the full source code for the Unreal Engine, and numerous commercial companies specializing in various disciplines have developed middleware technologies for Unreal in Artificial Intelligence, lighting, UI, physics, outdoor environments, terrain paging, inverse kinematics, human & vehicle simulation and others. We are able to readily acquire such technologies from the experts and later swap them out as something better comes along. Even the render engine is swappable. We are also developing with VBS2 which has a good set of out-of-the-box features and editing capabliity but not full source code access yet. Hopefully that will change in the near future so we can harness the full potential. I’m glad to be using both and look forward to what the industry will yield in the near future. The Army will continue to be flexible and use the right solution for the right task. Hope this helps. Thanks to James for the article and to everyone for your comments.

]]> By: Curtis Takaichi http://gamerlimit.com/2009/07/from-the-battlefield-to-the-screen/#comment-16058 Curtis Takaichi Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:48:50 +0000 http://gamerlimit.com/?p=28754#comment-16058 This is a very insightful piece. Awesome article James. This is a very insightful piece. Awesome article James.

]]> By: James Pinnell http://gamerlimit.com/2009/07/from-the-battlefield-to-the-screen/#comment-15684 James Pinnell Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:48:37 +0000 http://gamerlimit.com/?p=28754#comment-15684 @BahDog I wasn't saying that it was really a bad thing, I was just saying that most people wouldn't had that same knowledge years ago. And really, if it bothered me that much, would I have written a feature on the subject? :) @BahDog

I wasn’t saying that it was really a bad thing, I was just saying that most people wouldn’t had that same knowledge years ago.

And really, if it bothered me that much, would I have written a feature on the subject? :)

]]> By: jonondaspot http://gamerlimit.com/2009/07/from-the-battlefield-to-the-screen/#comment-15683 jonondaspot Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:04:52 +0000 http://gamerlimit.com/?p=28754#comment-15683 RSamples. No one in the Army is looking at AA anymore. It was used some in ATL but that has pretty much died off. Crytek isn't being investigated either. Not by PEOSTRI and not by NSC, nor the newly christened TCM Gaming under TRADOC. The only people looking at that right now (Crytek) are the SF guys. Real World from DARPA is under consideration but USSOCOM has pretty much written that program off too though a few people there are going to sink their careers trying to prop up that debacle. The US Army just bought VBS2 and are still in the Phase 1 fielding stage. They aren't looking at anything else right now and certainly they have written AA off completely. The weakness of AA along with most other products comes down to one fact. Terrain. You have to be able to do terrain conversion of DTED and SAT data. AA can't and even worse it does not use real World Relative lighting because such a feature was never built into the Unreal engine. It isn't going to happen either because that would involve yanking out the entire lighting engine of Unreal 3 and unlike other engines with U3 it would be cheaper and more common sense to write an engine from scratch. Crytek just opened a studio in Orlando to court DoD but so far DoD isn't listening because Crytek, despite using the Harrington Group, has zero understanding of how the US Military works. VBS2 Does HLA compliance thanks to Calytrix. Interfacing with OneSAF and JCATS as well as C2 - BFT - has been very smooth. Bohemia plans to infuse VBS2 with the Arma 2 engine as well. You should be aware that right now the ballistics model in VBS2 is far superior to AA. As regards Crytek, their big fault is their inability to render large terrain areas. They are trying to develop streaming technology but so far they are still on the drawing board. The TRADOC commander wanted the 15 sims gone and for the US Army to focus on a single product. That is what they are doing and the reason why locations such as Ft Hood run all of their convoy simulators provided by Lasershot with VBS2 as the enclosed sim. VBS2 isn't a super comprehensive solution but you are going to see the Army use it more exclusively for the next several years. It beats anything else out there because of it's RTE and AAR capability - that alone completely buries Crysis and Unreal. And as I said, forget Unreal because it's design inherently causes major issues with real world/real time lighting in terrain conversion. Organizations such as TCOIC are in full swing production using VBS2. RSamples. No one in the Army is looking at AA anymore. It was used some in ATL but that has pretty much died off. Crytek isn’t being investigated either. Not by PEOSTRI and not by NSC, nor the newly christened TCM Gaming under TRADOC. The only people looking at that right now (Crytek) are the SF guys. Real World from DARPA is under consideration but USSOCOM has pretty much written that program off too though a few people there are going to sink their careers trying to prop up that debacle.

The US Army just bought VBS2 and are still in the Phase 1 fielding stage. They aren’t looking at anything else right now and certainly they have written AA off completely. The weakness of AA along with most other products comes down to one fact. Terrain. You have to be able to do terrain conversion of DTED and SAT data. AA can’t and even worse it does not use real World Relative lighting because such a feature was never built into the Unreal engine. It isn’t going to happen either because that would involve yanking out the entire lighting engine of Unreal 3 and unlike other engines with U3 it would be cheaper and more common sense to write an engine from scratch. Crytek just opened a studio in Orlando to court DoD but so far DoD isn’t listening because Crytek, despite using the Harrington Group, has zero understanding of how the US Military works.

VBS2 Does HLA compliance thanks to Calytrix. Interfacing with OneSAF and JCATS as well as C2 – BFT – has been very smooth.

Bohemia plans to infuse VBS2 with the Arma 2 engine as well. You should be aware that right now the ballistics model in VBS2 is far superior to AA. As regards Crytek, their big fault is their inability to render large terrain areas. They are trying to develop streaming technology but so far they are still on the drawing board. The TRADOC commander wanted the 15 sims gone and for the US Army to focus on a single product. That is what they are doing and the reason why locations such as Ft Hood run all of their convoy simulators provided by Lasershot with VBS2 as the enclosed sim.

VBS2 isn’t a super comprehensive solution but you are going to see the Army use it more exclusively for the next several years. It beats anything else out there because of it’s RTE and AAR capability – that alone completely buries Crysis and Unreal. And as I said, forget Unreal because it’s design inherently causes major issues with real world/real time lighting in terrain conversion. Organizations such as TCOIC are in full swing production using VBS2.

]]> By: BahDog http://gamerlimit.com/2009/07/from-the-battlefield-to-the-screen/#comment-15682 BahDog Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:54:38 +0000 http://gamerlimit.com/?p=28754#comment-15682 Oh dear. As soon as I read the introductory paragraph about how 'scary' it is that people can name guns by model I thought to myself.. "This guy is probably from Australia." So people shouldn't be observant? Australia is also known as the land of banning things unnecessarily and being generally pussified. They make some pretty good wines though. It's also fitting to note than America's Army is, like someone said, pitifully low on the level of realism. Operation Flashpoint, ArmA and ArmA:2 are military simulators... America's Army is just a shitty FPS. Oh dear.
As soon as I read the introductory paragraph about how ‘scary’ it is that people can name guns by model I thought to myself.. “This guy is probably from Australia.”
So people shouldn’t be observant?
Australia is also known as the land of banning things unnecessarily and being generally pussified. They make some pretty good wines though.

It’s also fitting to note than America’s Army is, like someone said, pitifully low on the level of realism.
Operation Flashpoint, ArmA and ArmA:2 are military simulators…
America’s Army is just a shitty FPS.

]]> By: RSamples http://gamerlimit.com/2009/07/from-the-battlefield-to-the-screen/#comment-15677 RSamples Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:14:50 +0000 http://gamerlimit.com/?p=28754#comment-15677 America's Army and VBS2 are both used by the Army but for different purposes. VBS2 was chosen for some of the Army's training due to it being a broad commercial application that had a great deal of ready made features for doing mission rehearsal and its compatibility with legacy Army sims using an Army standard of network communication called HLA. But America's Army based on Unreal Engine 3 and other technologies like the CRY engine are definately better choices for producing more highly detailed system simulations requiring realistic ballistics, physics, control dynamics and visual realism like light and shadows, environmental effects, human movement and expression modeling, sensors such as night vision and infrared, and soldier training for target id and friendly identification. We have worked with both AA and VBS2 and each has its strengths. There is no one that does it all. Besides, in 1 or 2 years both will be obsolete and I understand the Army has deep development capabilities with AA whereas VBS2 is a box set. Good Article! Keep em coming. America’s Army and VBS2 are both used by the Army but for different purposes. VBS2 was chosen for some of the Army’s training due to it being a broad commercial application that had a great deal of ready made features for doing mission rehearsal and its compatibility with legacy Army sims using an Army standard of network communication called HLA. But America’s Army based on Unreal Engine 3 and other technologies like the CRY engine are definately better choices for producing more highly detailed system simulations requiring realistic ballistics, physics, control dynamics and visual realism like light and shadows, environmental effects, human movement and expression modeling, sensors such as night vision and infrared, and soldier training for target id and friendly identification. We have worked with both AA and VBS2 and each has its strengths. There is no one that does it all. Besides, in 1 or 2 years both will be obsolete and I understand the Army has deep development capabilities with AA whereas VBS2 is a box set. Good Article! Keep em coming.

]]> By: James Pinnell http://gamerlimit.com/2009/07/from-the-battlefield-to-the-screen/#comment-15676 James Pinnell Sun, 12 Jul 2009 01:37:55 +0000 http://gamerlimit.com/?p=28754#comment-15676 @jononaspot I was really impressed by Michael's knowledge and technical scope. I didn't really get into the nitty gritty for the article's sake, but there was a hell of a lot of detail that I omitted to make it more accessible. I'm hoping to follow it up by talking to developers (and Michael) of other military simulations that focus more on government application - including VTK and also the sim that the Australian Army use as well. @jononaspot

I was really impressed by Michael’s knowledge and technical scope. I didn’t really get into the nitty gritty for the article’s sake, but there was a hell of a lot of detail that I omitted to make it more accessible.

I’m hoping to follow it up by talking to developers (and Michael) of other military simulations that focus more on government application – including VTK and also the sim that the Australian Army use as well.

]]> By: Chris Carter http://gamerlimit.com/2009/07/from-the-battlefield-to-the-screen/#comment-15659 Chris Carter Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:56:33 +0000 http://gamerlimit.com/?p=28754#comment-15659 @jonondaspot We were lucky enough to get an interview with them :D. We'd love to interview the people responsible for VTK as well. @jonondaspot
We were lucky enough to get an interview with them :D . We’d love to interview the people responsible for VTK as well.

]]> By: jonondaspot http://gamerlimit.com/2009/07/from-the-battlefield-to-the-screen/#comment-15658 jonondaspot Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:45:45 +0000 http://gamerlimit.com/?p=28754#comment-15658 If you want to have a realistic article about virtualizing weaponry, AA should be at the bottom of the list. They had their clocked cleaned at the trials to be the official US Army simulation. That was won by VBS2 VTK which is also the official sim of the US Marines, the British MOD and NATO. http://virtualbattlespace.vbs2.com/ If you want to have a realistic article about virtualizing weaponry, AA should be at the bottom of the list. They had their clocked cleaned at the trials to be the official US Army simulation. That was won by VBS2 VTK which is also the official sim of the US Marines, the British MOD and NATO.

http://virtualbattlespace.vbs2.com/

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