The US Army Has One Of The Prettiest Video Games On The Planet

[mojo]

kotaku.com has an interesting post about the US Army's new video game (no, not VBS ... they are migrating away from that pretty quickly) the video link in the post are pretty cool.

Remember back in May, how we showed you that footage from the US military’s new “video game” simulation suite? Well, it’s back. And it looks more amazing than ever.

To recap, this is the Dismounted Soldier Training System (DSTS), a new simulation tool for the US Army. It’s cost the government nearly $US60 million to develop, but if you get to use it you’ll probably think it’s totally worth it, as it’s designed to be played not on a screen, but in a virtual reality rig, complete with goggles.

A lot of what you’re seeing here, especially in the second video, aren’t “levels” in the traditional sense, they’re massive outdoor environments being rendered by CryEngine 3 (the engine that powers Crysis 2).

Looks like a very pretty version of ArmA. Which makes me want to play this. Badly.

[Vitek]

looked at it. I will swear - no I will not. this is the same for America. as well that there is ARMA.
60 have little enough - 160 is a good amount for such a disgrace.

[lightfighter]X[]

CryEngine 3... yeah, gimme that 

If it is any good, has the same functionality as ArmA, same massive environments,m vehicles etc  and will be released as a real PC game I would trade ArmA for it .
It is the great engine, it is just fabulous, honestly.

[Monkman]

I saw some teaser vids from the adapted version of CryEngine3 that the USARMY is going to use...There was even a vid of a AC130 giving groundsupport and the explosions were very realistic. (in the attached youtube video...near the end, the Nightvision with tracers is simply stunning....) 

Unfortunately I did read that this was only going to be for MILSIM and will not be available to the civillian market.  (But I read that over 6 months ago)

Hopefully they may change that policy after the success of MW3 and BF3...Alot of money in those franchises.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAmFRWm4TEo

[Sokka]

The money spent on this... Is it better than the blanks - laser - gps systems' that already exist? Armies of the world have developed their training since forever, will cryengine 3 make them accept/deal with the prospect of sudden&violent death?

[mojo]

The money spent on this... Is it better than the blanks - laser - gps systems' that already exist? Armies of the world have developed their training since forever, will cryengine 3 make them accept/deal with the prospect of sudden&violent death?

As a point of reference ... The US Army spent more than $70Million USD on the training environment around VBS2.  The spent $14Million USD on just one training center.  They even spent $1.1Million on a stryker trainer.  There are about a dozen training devices all wrapped up into this current spending spree.  They take their war-games very seriously.  Just getting this into some sort of configuration to support DIS/HLA gateways was probably a good chunk of change.

This image may be of use to help you guys imagine what all the US Army puts together:

Each of these is a game talking to other games - servers talking to servers and supporting clients.  Imagine the CF Battle Server talking to ATOW's server and a dozen others - and the clients on the CF server being effected by the actions on those other servers.

[Vitek]

it is known. good one. none does not interfere with creating an interactive map.
example - has gone (or squad) finished the task (at a convenient time) came out.
make a card for a month - as in arma1. the simplest solution

[Inc_Cat]

AWSOME eyecandy as I love, and give me that editor asap!
Cryengine is indeed awesome!

What joy we could have had:-)

The money spent on this... Is it better than the blanks - laser - gps systems' that already exist? Armies of the world have developed their training since forever, will cryengine 3 make them accept/deal with the prospect of sudden&violent death?

I can't see in any near future that such sims will "take over" combat training... it's not like we'll end up with all your training done in front of a pc... at least not in my lifetime I hope! This is an accessory in the toolbox so to speak, so you can rest assured that blanks will continue to exsist:)

[Maj Pig [27thMEU]]

Remember, you guys can write your own game, just like this since the whole CryEngine is now on a free license