Blasting pixilated space ships can be mighty fun, as anyone who’s ever played Galaga can tell you. The Air Force thinks it can put all that joystick time to good use, too — by using games to help airmen prepare for real-life outer space combat.
The service is looking for game maker to build a sim for what it calls counterspace operations — military-speak for stopping enemy satellites.
Right now, its hard to train folks to handle these kinds of missions. Wargaming in orbit is an expensive and risky proposition. And most but definitely not all — of the coolest counterspace toys are still on the drawing board. So the Air Force wants a video game where these tasks can be trained and rehearsed in a realistic set of scenarios and simulations.
Access to any classified data would be eliminated in the simulation, the Air Force says in its request for proposals (scroll down). [B]ut the training that is provided could be conceptually valid and of sufficient fidelity to support the key [counterpsace] tasks.
The idea of using games to train kids for a space fight has been around for years at least since 1985s sci-fi classic, Enders Game.
The U.S. armed forces have been using games to prep its troops for even longer. Back in World War II, a flight simulator in New Yorks Coney Island amusement park was turned into a training tool for military pilots. Recent years have only brought the worlds of gaming and the world of war closer, as more of combat has become a matter of pushing the right buttons; and the game have grown more realistic.
Still, youve got to hope that this new sim wont be too true-to-life. Whats a space game, after all, without a tractor beams and a challenging stage?
Air Force Wants Space War Game
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{ 49 comments… read them below or add one }
I hear that The Last Starfighter is a good space simulation…
Video games as military trainers precede the Ender’s Game reference. I was working at Imagic, a video game company, in 83 when one of my co-workers came in and said that Atari had agreed to modify the arcade game, Battlezone, for tank training. He went on to say that the game’s developer was very upset as he had never visualized his game being taken in that direction.
Let’s not forget spew management, at least until we come up with workable pseudograv technology. Bring on the barf bags.
A 6-axis movement simulator will bring it on if you have any tendencies towards simulator sickness. The tank driving simulator at Ft St Knox is a 6-axis sim and the longest I could stay ‘on’ was about 2.5 minutes before hitting the spew button. Driving in the actual tank, however, posed no problem, ever.
Unfortunately though, the AF’s sims are likely for ground-based teleoperators, at least, for the forseeable future.
Yeah but Ender got to play in that huge 0-g gym with all the floating stuff and the cool suits and light guns. I wanna do that.
the air force is gonna spend alot of money when they can get some 3rd party game designer group to do this for free…. because they can use a free game engine and it will be fun to play shit i already got the design down in my head.
you flyboys crack me up.
http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/
OR
http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/projects/spacewar/
As long as it comes with a Star Wars original arcade casing with Darth Vader controls, I’m set.
The Last Starfighter, anyone?
so….america is already getting ready to ruin space
Why does the USAF want space war games? Is war a game to you? Life dies. The earth dies. Space dies.
What are you thinking about? Countries want to live with out fear. You take life and joy out of the universe.
The world needs cooperation not violence.
We need to be able to hold the “high ground”,in any future conflic. It is far better for the U.S. to hold it,than the communist Chinees!
They are NOT our friends.
It is always the military that has pushed the boundaries of technology. Without the naval battles in Europe, it would be impossible for Columbus to discover the New World. I think these simulations and games will have a long-term effect on the technological development of all humans, not to mention the defense of our planet.
If there are aliens, they are possibly the originators of the Universe. This county has taken a unfriendly view of the space intelligence in the media. If we destroy the intelligence, who will be left? The USAF?
It’s about time the USAF gets with the program. The US Army already has a realistic combat game which is apparently very popular. Next they should make more stratgic games that possible future officers can “practice” with.
The more emphasis and energy we put into space system development and deployment the better. If we do not do it China, Russia, the EU, or Japan will. Already the stage is being set for future conflicts over energy (oil) as China moves to secure regional supplies through out Asia and the US does the same in the Middle East (succeeding in Afgahnistan where the soviets failed in the 80′s). Twenty or Thirty years from now, barring any unforseen technological, social, or politcal upheavals, it is likely that humans will be fighting over scarce oil resources. Russia and China will be much stronger than they are today (especially China where we should see some staggering growth and development over the next two decades) and the United States will likely be weaker than it is now (though not very much weaker).
Space power will be more influential in future conflicts than air power has been in past ones
I’m very interested in how this “game” pans out. I have my own ideas about what “space wars” might entail, but I think it is going to be a LOT less glamerous than a lot of you sci-fi lovers think. If you read the article you will notice that the USAF wants to be able to defeat enemy sattelites and not much more (at this point).
So what interests me is… how?
Shoot them down with a huge ground based gun? Fire an interceptor missile at them? If they are smart they will avoid cluttering up Low Earth Orbit with debris and develop some kind of hunter-seeker satellite to rendezvous with the target satellite and de-orbit it. Sure its more expensive than firing a space-howitzer at it, but what happens when debris floating around in orbit strikes the International Space Station or an orbiting Space Shuttle?
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