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Technology

U.S. Army Developing Prototype Holodeck 293

Posted by Roblimo from the you-knew-it-had-to-come dept.
Our friend, Anonymous Coward, wrote in to tell us that the U.S. Army is developing what it calls the 'Cave Automatic Virtual Environment'. The facilities use 3d video and various forms of projection technology to create a virtual, interactive environment. Note the recursive acronym. (The story's in the February issue of Popular Science.)
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U.S. Army Developing Prototype Holodeck More

U.S. Army Developing Prototype Holodeck

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  • Re:never knew... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I never knew what WINE stood for... thank you! I assumed it was something like "Windows is not enough," or something like that...

    Windows is not enough, starring Linus Torvalds as James Bond, 007...

  • Re:lol... recursive acronym (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually, everyone who has posted here so far has been wrong. Although PINE now stands for Pine Internet News and Email, it started out as Pine Is Nearly Elm and went through a few intermediate stages. It's never been Pine Is Not Elm.

    But don't take my word for it--an author of the program [island-resort.com] knows far better than I. -------- I really should get an account. I mean, I take the time to write something, only to have it moderated down to -12 for posting as an AC.

  • Re:Famous quote from The Khan. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I wouldn't blame the dissolution of the Khan's empire on his sons, for the Khan created an empire that couldn't exist after his death. He was a great conqueror, but he had no concept of how to run a sustainable empire/society. It is one thing to ride into town on horseback, killing everything alive and burning the rest. It is another to shear a sheep without killing it, or plant your last seed instead of eating it.
  • The CAVE's have been around for a long time at research institutions (I first used one at the Uni of Houston in the summer of 96), and Quake 2 *has* been ported to the system... as to whether you can really get an enjoyable play experience out of it... well

    http://hoback.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~prajl ich/caveQuake/ [uiuc.edu]
  • Now the army can also play Robin Hood again, the Lieutenant being Robin, the Sergeant Major being Little John, and the cook Friar Tuck :-)

    Or some sergeant who always felt suppressed by his superiors will create his fantasy where they will serve them :^)
  • For an acronym to be recursive it has to refer back to itself -- not just have itself as its first word. More specifically it will need a verb.

    'Pine IS not elm' requires one to see the acronym to understand all the words.

    CAVE just has the acronym as its first word, but it doesn't refer to itself, so it's not recurives.

    I'm a dork.
  • There's a big list of recursive acronyms in the standard emacs distribution etc directory. My favorite two were always:

    FINE Is Not Emacs
    THIEF Isn't Even FINE
  • Do you really believe your claim about health care in the US ?!?

    Real life: a family was turned away from an emergency room, given a bottle of liquid aspirin for their child's fever, and DIRECTIONS to another hospital as they didn't have insurance. Their child died on the 40+ mile trip. It happens with alarming frequency.

    Your statement about NATO is correct though.
  • There WAS a Robinhood episode in the holodeck though - If I remember right, Barklay made the program (which involved a recreation of the bridge crew as subservients), and it was one of the first to show his "holo-addication"...

    I remember Worf's quote:
    "I am *not* a merry man."

    I think it was before the Q-Robinhood one...

    I could be wrong though...
  • The NCSA at UIUC here in Urbana-Champaign has had one of these for a while. I'm not sure how similar it is, but you can find out more here [uiuc.edu].


  • You said: Windows is not enough, starring Linus Torvalds as James Bond, 007...

    Methinks instead of the simple "007" it should be something like

    "Name is Torvalds, Linus Torvalds, 0.0.7"

    Heheheh

  • Last Year my Advanced Computer Graphics project was on the ImmersaDesk, here at University of Alaska it's sort of a half-a-CAVE. The ImmersaDesk uses the same set of CAVE-libs that the cave does, it's just 1/6th the price.

    The biggest problem I had developing on the CAVE was the UI. It uses a wand and head tracker to get your position in space. But I found that my gestures were very limited and that using 'head woggle' for judging a user's perspective in 3d was a bit clumsy.

    I also found that after more than 3 hours in the CAVE I'd have massive headaches due to the LCD shuttering action and low light.

    Yes, the CAVE has a way to go.



    - // Zarf //
  • I'm a student at the University of Michigan, and I write code for our CAVE here in the Virtual Reality Lab... CAVE's have been around for many years, especially in educational institutions (UIC and UIUC have had CAVEs for at least 5 years). Yes, you can play Quake in it. Yes, it's damned immersive. Unfortunately, the display takes an SGI Onyx2 with at *least* 2 InfiniteReality pipes to drive it -- US$500,000 worth of hardware on top of the already expensive price of actually getting a CAVE built and aligned by a company like Pyramid Systems.

    /Andrew
  • >Of course we have the crusades, the various civil wars, holy causes, and of course the Inquisition. All fought with low tech. All fought more or less hand to hand. And many weapons were designed to kill someone only at very close range--such as a double-handed long sword, whose primary purpose was to dismember a knight in shiny armor in much the same way you pull apart a cooked lobster.

    Hate to nitpick you to death, but the primary use of the broadsword was to bludgeon the peasents...a 'knight in shining armor' was practically invincible...until he fell of his horse, and was beaten to death by the feet/hooves/whatever as the battle raged about (and right over) him. And 'bludgeon' is fairly accurate...even if the sword was sharp when the knight rode into battle, it didn't stay that way for very long.

  • I've been playing in the CAVE enviroment here at the University of Michigan for about three years...a bunch of my friends program VR stuff for it. It's nothing new, and the technology implemented in it is decidedly old skool. It is a very 'open' setup, as Quake and several other things have been ported to it. In fact, even a Palm Pilot can be used to control it. The setup consists of four projectors, putting images on three walls and the floor. Users wear LCD shutter glasses, and the main user holds a wand that has a couple of buttons on it. The main user also has a head tracker on he/she/it's shutter glasses. It is a decidedly cool setup, but could use many improvements.

    -Ryan

    The story of my life: "What the hell am I doing here?"
  • I don't know what processor controlled the first "programmable missle controller chip", but it probably wasn't the 4004. The 4004 was developed for a Japanese company called Busicom. It was the first microprocessor from Intel, and was designed to control a desktop calculator. I don't know if it was ever used for military purposes, but that is not what it was designed for.

  • Seriously, one of the major Holodeck features is the recreation of physical objects, such as a chair to sit on. While a couple of people working in the same space can be useful, how applicable is this sort of VR training to the real thing? I would think that you don't get a huge amount of useful training out of something that doesn't even have a real cockpit...
  • Along those lines, the NCSA at the Univ. of Illinois (Urbana) has had one for some time [uiuc.edu] (note the Dec. 1997 "last updated"). I have actually had the opportunity to go into the CAVE. You wear special glasses and the experience is awesome. I would suggest that if you can get a tour in one, do so!

    BTW, the link above has some user manuals as well as some descriptions about how the whole thing works.
  • March 3-4, 2000, actually. The EOH page is here [uiuc.edu].
  • They had a CAVE at Supercomputing '93 in Portland, OR (1993!). I went and checked it out, and it was pretty cool for 1993. But unless the tech has really improved, it would be pretty damn boring next to a stereoscopically rendered quake3.

  • That's why i'm calling my current project BINARA - Binara Is Not A Recursive Acronym.

  • Interestingly, the EVL also made the 3D wire-frame projection of the Death Star trench that was used in the rebel briefing scene in Star Wars. This is a project with deep roots and has been around for quite a while ...
  • Virtual tank simulators can provide much more realism than firing at targets at a tank range. How do you train tank crews in small unit tactics on a tank range? You don't. A simulator lets you do things that would be far too dangerous in a live fire exercise. Plus the crew spends most of their time in training, not in cleaning and repairing the tank.

    War is damned expensive, losing a battle because the soldiers are not properly equipped and trained is more expensive. Many modern weapons are too expensive to expend in peacetime training.

  • Re:Is this really a good thing? (Score:3)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Monday February 07, 2000 @01:09AM (#1299357) Homepage
    Do you have any military experience? Or do you just get your knowledge from TV?

    I can assure you that the average soldier understands that war is not a video game, that real people, including soldiers, get killed and wounded. That's more than I can say for some civilians.

    Realistic training is vital for combat effectiveness and survival. If you have to think about it, you will be in big trouble when dealing with the high stress of combat. The advantages of virtual reality simulations are cost and safety. Field exercises with live ammunition are very expensive and safety requirements are at odds with realism.

  • ...will be the last thing mankind ever invents.
  • Hoo hoo! Glad someone else here has heard of it. Saw the story...thought "There's been one at the NCSA since before I was here." Truly aweomse experience, but with one caveat:

    Take Dramamine before you use it.

    Hey...did you notice the barf bag on the door at the one at Beckman?

  • Yeah, let's fight a war where one side never has to see any blood, and all the bleeding's done by the other side. Go, U.S. Army! You guys must be real proud of your achievements.

    Yeah, I couldn't wait to enlist in Akaji Monkey's Politically Correct Army (PCA), where we purposely let the enemy kill some of our own troops in the interest of "fairness." If you loved Affirmative Action, well brother, you ain't seen nothin' yet! The next time that a war arises, we're gonna airdrop some of our finest tanks and air fighters, and to really level the playing field (no pun intended!), a random few of those fighters will be equipped with nuclear weapons! If getting ourselves nuked will prevent the enemy from losing their self-esteem and feeling bad about themselves, let me be the first to paint a target on my chest!

    Yeesh.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Listen, if you'd actually bothered to read my post, you would have seen that nowhere did I advocate giving an advantage to the opponents.

    Not in those words, you didn't, it was just your opinion that the US Army should be ashamed for working toward a goal where "all the bleeding is done by the other side." Since you disdain that goal, logic follows that you think the US Army should see that at least some of the bleeding is done by their own side.

    As far as Kuwait goes, you're criticizing the US for chasing the Iraqis out of there? Is Saddam Hussein your idol or something, or are you just nostalgic for the days of the Republican Guard crushing those uppity Kuwaitis?

    Finally, the last thing you need to be doing is questioning anyone's intelligence if you think that it hasn't been the hope of just about every army ever created that "all the bleeding is done by the other side." Nah, only those evil Americans hope for things like that...

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • See, out here in the real world, sometimes people have to be killed -- yes, even people with families back at home. Of course, I guess you think that Adolf Hitler would've stopped invading all those countries if we sent him a nice letter asking him to behave.

    Flower power, duuuuude!

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • You seem confused. Did I not make a single reference to what you actually wrote, or did I quote you out of context? Make up your mind.

    My original post quoted your entire line. My followup quoted only the part to which I was referring in order to emphasize what was so foolish about your statement. My original (as well as the follow-up) point still applies when your quote is taken in its entirety.

    As far as Kuwait goes, I don't know too many people who didn't think that freeing the Kuwaitis was a good thing. If that wasn't most people's primary reason for entering the war (as opposed to oil prices, setting an example for other aggressive dictators, etc.), well who cares? I just find it curious for you to complain about it, since it had the result of freeing Kuwait from Iraq. You sound like someone who'd say, "Yeah, well I know the doctor saved my mother's life, but I think he did it to save himself from a malpractice suit rather than out of any concern for my mother. Selfish bastard."

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Yes, it is a shame that everyone doesn't play nice with each other. But it's reality, so those of us not living in fantasyland have to deal with it. I'm sorry to break it to you, but unless you're a reincarnated John Lennon, sitting around holding hands and singing "All we are saying is give peace a chance" will get you nowhere in this world.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • We don't have many enemies, either!

    Canada has practically zero clout in the world, though. I'll take having a large influence in the world, picking up some jealous enemies along the way, over being a non-player any day of the week.

    It's like the New York Yankees versus the Montreal Expos. Who hates the Expos? Nobody! Why? Because they have no impact on the game. Who hates the Yankees? Just about everyone but Yankees fans, because success breeds contempt.

    Of course, a similar effect is in play in terms of friendly countries. Because of their power, an awful lot of countries want the US to be on their side. Other than the US, who would say the same about Canada? Who would care?

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • My school has one of these....tried it last fall...

    Check it out here [vt.edu]

    Very cool, seems to be the same thing the army is, quote 'developing'....and I know that this has been around for quite some time.

    They actually ported Quake and Quake2 to these things, it's actually quite fun...unfortunately financial restraints keep us from doing too much deathmatching....something on the order of $10million a piece.......

    But it does definitely feel -almost- real. It's pretty cool to have things come up at you in life size from all sides....hopefully the technology will get a good push and go down in price, I want one in my room .

    Julius X
  • Disney has had multi-user caves in a commercial product for the Hercules ride at DisneyQuest for over a year. These multiple users were in the same cave. Offshoots of the Responsive Workbench project (by one or more of the Gang of Five schools if I recall correctly) have focused on remote collaboration in the RWB's semi-immsersive virtual reality environment. While there may be some interesting uses arising from synchronization of multiple caves, the concept is certainly not novel. The accomplishment in this project seems to be the acquisition of the necessary funding to put well-known research work in a "real-world" setting.
  • Yes/No. How much do you trust your government? This innovation is interesting in that it requires a huge social system to implement it, but it distances incredibly the folk who use it from that same social system.

    Constructing a few situations that appear to me to be analogous: Individual multi-cellular animals "solved" this problem by requiring everybody to have the same genetic code (i.e., to be identical, but we still get cancer) and in mammals it is paritally implemented by the blood-brain barrier. In a hive of ants, everybody is each-other's sister (except for the disposeable drones). Blind mole-rats have one queen who rules the nest, but I don't remember the rules of inheritance...(are the sub-queens allowed to breed?)

    How do you think people should solve it?
  • See, out here in the real world, sometimes people have to be killed -- yes, even people with families back at home. Of course, I guess you think that Adolf Hitler would've stopped invading all those countries if we sent him a nice letter asking him to behave.

    Nobody would argue that Hitler was "evil". But it wasn't Germans who firebombed Hamburg and Dresden, and it wasn't Germans who nuked Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It wasn't Germans who defoliated Vietnamese jungle and used Napalm to get rid of those pesky Charlies. And where the Germans had KZ workers, the US had african slaves. Where the Germans gassed the Jews, the US all but eradicated native americans.

    Let's face it, the USA is not one iota better than most other countries of history; and worse than some. But the USA are very successful for a variety of reasons, and the victor, afterall, gets to write the history books.

    A lot of people are getting very, very tired of being pushed around by the US. The US has absolutely no right to be the "policeman of the world".

  • The soldier morals don't do much more than lower his/her chances of survival. Once in battle if they don't kill the target chances are good the target is going to kill them.

    The problem is the people who declare war never have to see the blood. It's body counts and statistics. This is a problem that has been around every sence midevil kings opted not to lead the armys in battle.

    IMHO anything that can bring leaders in contact with the blood (even camas on bombs) is a good thing. If you bomb a person you get to see the expression on his face before he is "deleated" an expression that will last forever.

    The problem with iconning targets is a problem on many levels...
    In battle the soldiers morals are not suppresed. He will be compleatly aware those Icons aren't just pixles. It dosn't become "just a video game" to him just becouse he is killing icons. He knows there are real people behind those icons. The more he sees those icons and not the real people the more the icons start to look like friends and famaly. It's a matter of psycology. He will eventually vertuallise an enemy he can not kill simply becouse after every "frag" he says "I wonder" the frags become kills.. the enemy becomes someone he might have known.. A sensory disconect forces us to ask such questions of morality.
    It's easyer to see a person as evil when you can see the person and get force feed stereotypes.

    There is annother problem... Is icons are the way to identify targets... that just turns our soldiers into atomitons. Machines can allready target and kill faster than humans and can survive a pounding. The intelect is what makes humans better killing machines than robots. The ability to correctly identify our targets. A machine iconifying targets for a human soldier would be a problem. Crack it or worse... utilise a defect. Then a whole army base can vanish from the vertual landsape. "Were did the icons go?"

    Finnaly if the computer mistakenly idenifyed an innocent as a target.. say the people your asigned to protect... It would be a MAJOR political event. Even if it only happend on occasion.. It happends.. it's repeatable.. and can be demonstrated infront of the press.

    Also when trainning when fragging icons the soldier will have no reason to become comfortable with killing real people who are simply represented by icons. The moment he is in a real battle he won't be seeing the icons as video game carricters but as real people.. and he will not be able to shoot.
  • CAVE - Cave Automatic Virtual Environment. Reminds me of PINE - PINE is not elm! and GNU - Gnu's Not Unix!

    yes, yes, not really on topic, but I thought it was funny.
    ___________________
  • I never knew what WINE stood for... thank you! I assumed it was something like "Windows is not enough," or something like that...
    ___________________
  • hm, I heard a long time ago that it was Pine is not elm, as elm was another mail program... could be wrong though.
    ___________________

  • The cave is nothing new (Score:3)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Sunday February 06, 2000 @10:39PM (#1299374)
    There are several in existence already, and they've been there for 5+ years.
    NCSA.uiuc has one..
  • uic's has had a cave for years:
    http://www.evl.uic.edu/pape/CAVE/ [uic.edu]
    it sounds alot cooler than it is. its running off some old sgi box or other...

    we play cave quake on it. http://hoback.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~prajl ich/caveQuake/ [uiuc.edu] but its not very stable, and the interface needs some work. one cool thing is that your gun is your cursur and its rendered in full 3d instead of just a 2d image. you can twist your gun around and stuff. you have to actualy duck, to duck in the game, and jumping is automated so you end up getting stuck in the walls alot.
  • In all seriousness, the CAVE is being researched and developed here at Brown University's Graphics Group, headed by Andy van Dam. I was asked if I wanted to do my thesis using one, but I rejected the idea because I'd have to teach myself this complex structure and write for it. I'm thinking I shoulda just sucked it up, huh?

    -bp
  • I had the privilege of working at SARA while building an ISP for the Dutch phone company back in '95 (great bunch of folks there, hi harold!)and got to play in the CAVE for a little while. It was a most enjoyable experience. They use the first SGI Onyx2 Reality Monster ever made! It was amazing stuff, back in '95. Of course, why this is news now, I have no idea. The coolest part of SARA though is the old Cray thats been converted to a couch in the lobby, since its too expensive to operate.
  • You said 'Hitler'! Godwin's Law! Thread's Over!

  • VRCO (Score:1)

    by dica ( 27151 )
    I'm debugging a CAVE program right now. Going to go play with it in NCSA's cave tommorow.

    The CAVE is sold by a company VRCO [vrco.com]. Anyone with a spare $15k laying around can buy one. It even runs on linux.

    Its based heavily on OpenGL.
    An open source analog is in the works right now.

  • Wouldn't Torvalds 0.0.7 be his eighth grandchild?
  • CAVE has been mentioned in /. before.
  • The Secret Service wouldn't appreciate having to deal with Mounties. Next thing you'd know, President Clinton would find himself on trial. Oh, wait, we tried that ourselves, and it doesn't work.

  • I've Spelunked the CAVE (Score:3)

    by coaxial ( 28297 ) on Sunday February 06, 2000 @11:18PM (#1299383) Homepage
    When I was at the University of Illinois [uiuc.edu] I took people on a tour of the CAVE [uiuc.edu] at the NCSA [uiuc.edu]. It's pretty cool. Four 7 foot projecttion screens on each side of you. You stand in the middle holding a joystick that is tracked by a sensor on the ceiling. LCD goggles that flip opaceity between your eyes gives you a 3D enviroment.

    They the cab to a Catapiller bulldozer that they were looking into using as some sort of computer aided training.

    It's alot like a first person shooter, only with out guns or textures. Personally I don't think VR will ever become something revolutionary until we develop a more immersive enviorment (real touch (not just that lame vibration stuff) and the solving the dismounted soldier problem [slashdot.org] for example).
  • Considering all the problems the holodeck has caused on Star Trek, I don't see anything good coming from this project.

    Then again, I could see this replacing current pr0n material.

    Hmmm... ok, now I see the advantages. How much longer until I can buy one of these? :)

  • Argonne National Labs has had something like this for quite a few years. I think they even call it the cave, though that might just be the nickname for it. It has a very cool demo program in which you are inside a giant fish tank with fish swimming all around you. Some are rather fanciful, like the 747 using its wings like fins. It is particularly weird when you see a fish swimming through your own body!

    Izaak

  • At least for the US Marines, When we yell kill and stick our bayonete into a prictice target, that target is shaped like a human. Russian infantry to be exact. Most of the targets we shoot our rifles at our human shaped. The Marine Corps has not forgot that we make our living at the bloody end of the spear.

    Semper Fi
  • Of course no-one would attack Canada. That would piss off the Mounties. Then all heck would break loose.

  • Sure thing. Makes the job of removing deeply ingrained (socialized and inborn) morals that much easier, since you have to remove less in order to create an efficient killer.

    Now this is just crap. Do you honestly believe that the military is staffed with golems which only strive to perform whatever task is set forth by commanders?

    Think about that for a second. What you are basically positing here is that whenever you join the military you give up whatever identity you have.

    What it all boils down to is that the military is a job. Nothing more, nothing less. Having been in the Marines for 11 years I can honestly say that I never met any Marine who's sole goal was to kill defenseless women and children. I can also say that nearly all of the Marines I have ever known were moral and honorable people.

    I suppose that if you have no faith in Humanity it would be easy to think that a video game can make anyone into an amoral killing machine.

    Fortunately all of the people I know far exceed your expectations.

  • There's been another CAVE in the computer sci. dept at Indiana University--Bloomington for several years now. Here's their homepage: http://avl.iu.edu/index.html [iu.edu] You can even take tours. woohoo!
  • The three biggest complaints about the cave are:
    1. Too dark
    2. Not multiuser
    3. Too small of a room

    Projector technology right now sucks for the high end. The CAVE uses CRT projectors (much like the ones in the old big screen TV's) instead of a brighter technology such as LCD, DLP, or Digital Light Valve. Unfortunately, the manufacturers of these brighter products have not pushed the refresh rate limit. In order to use the StereoGraphics shutter glasses, you need at least 100 Hz refresh rate out of your projectors. Currently, the only types of projectors that can handle 100 Hz are CRT's.

    These CAVE's are not really multiuser. There are some real problems with perspective in these environments. Only one person can have a corrected view frustrum, and everyone else has to put up with a warping and shearing scene. Of course, this is assuming you are trying to visualize something floating in front of you. This is very hard to describe, but if you think about it, imagine projecting an object floating in front of you, while trying to give your user the ability to walk all around it. Anyhow, this is impossible in any multiuser mode.

    CAVE are small. 10'^3 may seem like a lot of space, (as most people's dorm rooms are 12'^3), but oftimes people are limited in movement. This also limits the number of people who can share this experience.

    The Electronic Visualization Lab at University of Illinois [uic.edu], Argonne National Labs Futures Lab [anl.gov], and NCSA [uiuc.edu] all have major research going on in CAVE technology.

    Another simpler version of the CAVE is what they call workbench technologies. See:
    Caltech [caltech.edu]
    Stanford [stanford.edu]
    Fakespace [fakespace.com]


    -Stryemer
    We are the music makers,
    and we are the dreamers of the dream.

  • Real tenuous connection - there was an episode of the Outer Limits starring Mark Hamill (as "Dr Sam Stein" - I looked it up on IMDB here [imdb.com] guys, I'm not that much of a trainspotter) in which he plays a Scientist who invents a virtual reality environment called - the CAVE.

    Sub-frankenstein nonsense, of course, the machine falls in love with him and tries to pull him permanently into virtual reality. But now I'm thinking - hey maybe it was real after all...

    Or not, as the case may be. ;o)

    -Baz

  • Erm. Been around for some time (Score:4)

    by PhiRatE ( 39645 ) on Sunday February 06, 2000 @09:57PM (#1299392)
    These guys make 'em: http://www.evl.uic.edu/EVL/VR/ [uic.edu]

    The Cave is the big room style VR thing, linking two together may be new, but I doubt it. Whats cool is that the military are using that kind of thing for simulation :)

  • I can imagine what these CAVEs are used for after hours! Just think, several socially-inept geeks working for the government, who happen to be working on CAVE, which is used to work on new weapon designs? Can we say, "I-am-going-back-to-grab-some-papers - and-maybe-play-some-quake3d"?

    That, and a miriad of other practical entertainment applications, of course.

    -------
    CAIMLAS

  • Well, I doubt it will go to blinking squares. The fact is, that at least for America, we care what we target. We don't want to target schools and churches, we want command centers, factories, and other targets that actually affect the opposing force's capability to make war. If for no other reason than we don't want to waste a 2.5 million dollar smart missile on a church, when we could get something usefule. So I doubt that the video will be replaced any time soon.

    Also, I don't think that getting "up close and personal" about killing is really much of a deterent. One can read any number of accounts of really really sick shit being perpetrated by soldiers armed with nothing but swords. Look at the Crusades, or the accounts in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, for examples.

    Making soldiers see their victims eye to eye will do nothing to end wars.

    Yeah, let's fight a war where one side never has to see any blood, and all the bleeding's done by the other side. Go, U.S. Army! You guys must be real proud of your achievements.

    Armies have been proud of slaughter for all of human history. They've enjoyed seeing blood. If we don't see the blood, we will not be any less civilized. Your sarcasm is misdirected.
  • The Oil companies have been using CAVEs to visualize the innards of oil and gas reservoirs. Its pretty useful. The problem geologists have is that they are having to visualize the insides of extremely complex 3D objects. (I'd say that the Earth is a pretty complex 3D object, wouldn't you?) I've been in one at ARCO (a 3 wall and a floor model) and seen some really cool structures represented that would have been impossible to really draw in 2D. This thing is a much bigger boon to science than to the military.

    Das ist sehr groovy.
  • Say, you wouldn't happen to remember who did the calculations for the galaxy merger demo you saw, would you? One of my colleagues at Indiana University, Bob Berrington, made a demo like that from his merger calculations, and I believe the IU CAVEmen took it to a few conferences. I'm wondering if the one you saw was the same one.


    The CAVE works well for visualizing N-body calculations, like galaxy mergers, because the particles can be represented by simple shapes like spheres, and because you can pare down the particles to a reasonable number without losing too much information. Unfortunately, we had less success visualizing computational fluid dynamics calculations because the number of polygons required to represent the complicated surfaces made the whole business prohibitively sluggish. That was too bad because I had had these visions of the protostellar disk models swirling in midair in front of me like the accretion disks in ``The Black Hole'' (a cheesy sci-fi movie, for those not familiar with it). Oh, well, someday.


    -r

  • (1) When all you can pick on is spelling, it means you have nothing meaningful to say.

    (2) I specifically picked the Khmer Rouge because I am aware the US has done nothing to stop them. I was engaging in something called "irony", a subtle practice which apparently some people just don't get.
  • The Internet, the successor to the ARPA-net, was developed using funding from DARPA, a DoD group who funds advanced projects. The ARPA-net was designed and developed as a distributed communications system which, amongst other things, could survive a nuclear war. (That was one of the driving design goals of TCP/IP, and that's why IP is so good at surviving things like a router going down.)

    I first got started using the 'net way back in '83 when I was a student at Caltech. And at that time, you were only permitted to use the 'net if you had a valid research grant which required use of the ARPA-net account. Of course by about '85, that rule was largely ignored, and the whole thing turned over to total civilian control by about the same time, as I recall.

    (Of course at the time I was drinking more beer than paying attention to whose research dime I was e-mailing on; silly me. So take my cronology with a grain of salt.)

    But in point of fact, the academic world designed the thing in much the same way the academic world designs things like spy satelites and better ballistic missles and radar jammers and all those other nifty high-tech death machines...

    On the Department of Defense's dime.
  • if you beleive that killing people can ever be 'appropriate', then you have been brainwashed. the most basic tenet of any real moral philosophy is the sanctity of human life.

    When a burglar breaks into your house and puts a gun to your throat, do you believe it is immoral to defend yourself, even if you have to resort to lethal force? Or do you believe you should simply yield, and perhaps die?

    The analogy does extend to the international arena. I'm sorry if you don't see that, but unfortunately it does.

    . it makes the US look foolish on the world stage when they say to milosevic et al. "don't kill people, killing people is a bad bad thing! hell, we think it's such a bad thing, we are going to send OUR army in and kill YOUR people. basically, they are saying "we will teach you not to kill by killing."... tha's like 'fucking for virginity'... it just makes no sense.

    *shrug* I'm sorry if it doesn't make any sense to you, but it's about the use and/or the threat of use of lethal force. Sometimes you can stop someone by talking them down. Sometimes you can stop someone by threatening to blow them away. And sometimes you can't stop them--and wind up having to blow them away before they kill more people themselves.

    We tried talking in Kosovo. We tried for *years*. Did no good; in fact, it got to the point where the folks there believed they could do whatever the hell they felt like because President Clinton didn't have the balls to intervene. Are you suggesting that in light of massacres and rape and pillaging and death we should send over yet another polite letter asking if they could stop?

    Of course we could always just ignore things in Kosovo--quite a few people here in the United States advocated just that. But if you recall your world history, you'd remember that World War I started because of interlocking relationships between various factions that were (and are now still) fighting over there.

    And if you think an isolated massacre sucks, try a world war in a world full of smaller powers with weapons of mass destruction.

    how is training your army to be more effective at killing going to reduce the number of casualties, you nitwit! it might reduce the financial cost of war for you, but tha's about it.

    Simple: the threat of force causes most people to think twice about starting a war themselves. In fact, it's working with you, so don't think it doesn't work with world leaders as well.

    Again, if you recalled your history, you'd note the reason why the United States dropped two nuclear warheads on Japan at the end of World War II was because Japan refused to surrender and refused to stop making war on it's neighbors, and the estimated casualty count for invading Japan was in the multiple million range.

    What happend in Nagasaki and Heroshima sucked. What could have happend if we had choosen to invade Japan would have been far worse.

    why only two? you mean only two that you can think of... there's things like diplomacy, sanctions, the UN war crimes tribunal, etc. now, i don't have a problem if some highly highly skilled commandos capture these murderers so that they can stand trial in a court of law (what a new-age thought!) but, again, fighting to end some fighting makes you look like an idiot.

    Several points.

    1) Diplomacy only works when the agressors are willing to sit down and discuss reasonable measures. In the case of Kosovo, diplomacy was tried for *years*, and because the people involved had the honor of small hungry children who promise not to steal cookies from the cookie jar, diplomacy was a total and complete failure.

    2) Sanctions only work when the country who is having sanctions used against it cares one whit, and when the parties imposing a sanction actually follow it. Or didn't you read about the Russian oil tankers who were attempting to run the UN imposed blockade against Iraqi oil?

    By and large, with a willing leader who doesn't care about his people, sanctions don't work at all. Or did you forget about Cuba, who is moving into a quarter century of sanctions without changing it's government one millimeter?

    3) A UN war tribunal only works when the governments who form the tribunal under UN authority are willing to send troups in in order to settle the situation--that is, if the UN is willing to send in troups who are prepared to kill people. Without such forces who are willing to impose the will of the tribunal, such a court of law is little more than a legal masturbation exercise--it may feel good, but ultimately produces nothing but a small mess.

    4) As to the commandos: the United States has tried that on rare occassion, and has gotten into quite a bit of trouble. Frankly, sending in commandos is a violation of international law, while sending in troups is not, and for good reason: in theory, nations are not supposed to resort to undermining other nations--their complaints are supposed to be brought out in the open so the international community can know what the hell is going on.

    Furthermore, the United States has made sending in commandos as you suggest illegal unless the President signs a special order. So it's not something we can "routinely" do.

    well, this is just wrong again. it is not your army that protects you from domestic deathsquads (i didn't know that was a problem in the states, i guess i'll have to look for them next time i'm down there), it would be your local police dept, as far as i can tell.

    There are clear lines of jurisdiction. And in the United States, it is the army who is responsible for external invaders, and the states (and by extension the local police) who are responsible for keeping local law and order.

    Of course there is a lot of 'bleed over' in sharing technology: the city where I live are using technology developed for the Army to catch speeders at night. And the same training techniques are used, more or less, by the local police force to train cadets.

    But what I was talking about was the fact that unlike many areas of the world, having a powerful army who is directly controlled by a civilian government, and who is embedded in a culture who prizes diversity and law and order above chaos and "kill your neighbor if he's not your brother" allows me to sleep better at night.
  • I believe that this is sometimes the case--I have translated acounts of some of the very same roman sooldiers and gladiators you speak of who rather enjoyed killing (or claimed to.)

    Well, the predominate religion of the soldiers at that time, Mithriasm (sp?), put a high value on acting like a soldier: that is, it put a high value on killing and being killed with honor. So in a sense, killing folks and dying on your own shield were both considered holy, religious acts.

    When Christianity started sweeping the Roman empire with it's acceptance by Constantine, Christianity adopted many of these "millitaristic" aspects. Thus things like "onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war" has a long, ingraned history in Christian thought. Of course Christianity borrowed heavily from earlier Roman military cults, including things like an afterlife and a "heavenly reward for a life lifed well"--well being redefined to include non-soldierly acts.

    In fact, as far as I can find, in Western civilization the notion that killing someone during battle is a bad thing is a recent invention. In large part because of people's disgust at the very cold blooded and calculated way we can now kill thousands or millions with the push of a button.

    So I would argue that in fact, the depersonalization of war has made war unthinkable, rather than the other way around. That is, war and killing people was more acceptable to people when we were doing it hand to hand and face to face.
  • My impression was not that his son was "weak", but when he died, his sons returned from doing battle to attend the funeral, and that stopped the westward momentum.

    On the other hand, it was said about the Mongol empire that a well-dressed young woman could ride on horseback with two large sacks of gold from the Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean without once being accosted or robbed. Quite an impressive accomplishment for *any* empire or nation-state, even in today's world.

  • Re:ender's game? (Score:3)

    by w3woody ( 44457 ) on Sunday February 06, 2000 @11:35PM (#1299402) Homepage
    I see someone's not up on their history.

    Let's see. We have the Mongolians who, in the process of spreading their might, wiped out millions, one at a time, using nothing more sophisticated than an axe. They were deadly enough that the name Khan just rang all sorts of bells with that Star Trek movie...

    Then we have the Romans, whose spread of civilization was done at the cost of all of those insignificant, worthless "gauls" who weren't considered important enough by the Romans to do much more with than slaughter and enslave.

    Of course we have the crusades, the various civil wars, holy causes, and of course the Inquisition. All fought with low tech. All fought more or less hand to hand. And many weapons were designed to kill someone only at very close range--such as a double-handed long sword, whose primary purpose was to dismember a knight in shiny armor in much the same way you pull apart a cooked lobster.

    People have been killing people in very large numbers at very close range for thousands of years. It wasn't like the invention of a programmable missle controller chip (the predecessor to the Intel 4004) caused people to suddenly realize "hey, I don't have to take moral responsibility for who I kill, so let's fight even bloodier and bigger wars than ever before."

    Nah; technology found its way to the private sector where it was used, ah, um, for stuff like this web site.

  • Re:Is this really a good thing? (Score:3)

    by w3woody ( 44457 ) on Sunday February 06, 2000 @11:49PM (#1299403) Homepage
    Political science theory going over your head? Here's a brief primer.

    In the United States, we've studied these sorts of things to death. Things like the appropriateness and inappropriateness of war. And what most of the better thinkers in the US have come up with is that you only fight a war when another country (a) starts it, (b) that this war will affect citizens abroad in a negative way, (c) you can go in and stop it, and (d) the cost of stopping the war (by engaging the other side) is less than the cost of allowing the beligerant party to continue.

    So in the United States, as we are the defacto policeman of the world (and have been to one degree or another since the Monroe Doctrine), we've been trying to figure out how to reduce the cost of war (in terms of casulties on both our side and theirs) in an attempt to promote a degree of "piece" at least for US citizens traveling abroad.

    It sucks.

    But until you can figure out a pieceful way to solve things like the Balkanization of Yugoslavia (yes, I appreciate the irony) and the murder and/or displacement of millions of innocent civilians in places like Chechnia, Kosovo, or Cambodia in a way which doesn't require some form of force, unfortunately you are going to have two choices.

    1) Use force. And that means having very well armed people who are very well trained at killing people, or

    2) Allow madmen like the Khamer Rouge run wild, murdering whoever they like.

    The world sucks. But having the biggest and baddest army in the world maximizes the chance that when I go to sleep tonight, death squads won't break into my house and murder my wife as she sleeps next to me.
  • though hopefully in real life they won't run "f***ing Windows 98" or invade Canada.
  • Hell, who wouldn't want to go live in their favorite TV show brought to life?

    Forget getting to live in your favorite TV show, just imagin, recreate an image of some hot babe off of TV and have her do whatever you want her to. :)

    Net sex takes on a whole new meaning.... doesn't it?:)

    Remember! Safe sex, is Holodeck sex! :)

  • Real life: a family was turned away from an emergency room, given a bottle of liquid aspirin for their child's fever, and DIRECTIONS to another hospital as they didn't have insurance. Their child died on the 40+ mile trip. It happens with alarming frequency.

    Hmm, can you say lawsuit? I'm sure that'd surely be a win in court. "Child dies because hospital refused to treat child." There is no reason why a hospital should refuse any type of medical treatment to anyone because they don't have insurance. Lets see here, if ANYONE refused medical care to anyone for whatever reason, I'd say that's a good lawsuit, especially if someone dies from it. Just because your child has a fever doesn't mean you can't pay for the medical bill without insurance. It could only cost $10,000 to treat the kid and then if you have no insurance you eat it. Just plain and simple, but refusing medical treatment to anyone for whatever reason is a bad thing. I mean, what if someone died from a hospital refusing to treat them and it turns out the bill cold have cost only $10,000.00 *AND* the person could have afforded the bill. Oh man, I'm sure that'd be a multi-million dollar lawsuit.

  • Re:Is this really a good thing? (Score:3)

    by lakdjfalkdj ( 49332 ) on Monday February 07, 2000 @12:03AM (#1299408)
    you obviously don't understand from a philosophical/moral standpoint is that violence should not be an option, period (uh-oh, here come the flames...) this comes from the basic moral premise that one should not do harm to another person. of course, there is the infamous retort, well he did it first! but ppl fail to realise that the original premise still must hold--one should never do harm, otherwise the person who claims to hold peaceful values yet is reactionary fails to maintain their peaceful values. the addition of an unjust action to an unjust action does not result in a just action. basic addition and subtraction can tell you this. just a thought

    While, your philosophical/moral standpoint is great and I *REALLY* wish it worked that way in real life, but it doesn't. The problem with taking the attitude of, "oh, lets try and work this out, and not fight" doesn't really work in the real world. In the real world you have people like Hitler, who didn't care less about countries such as France when he just basically rolled over them with the Panza divisions. If Britain weren't able to hold out as long as they did, Europe would have fell to Germany in no time. Actually if France would have started building up their military when Germany was, they probably would have been able to hold out longer and do a better job.

    The point I'm trying to make is, when you have a good army, and able to possibly stomp out the other guy, and willing to take the risk of going to war to protect your country and your freedoms from nasty people, then the philosophical/moral thing is useless. What good does it do you to have philosophical ideals when you got some dictator telling you which hand to wipe your ass with?

    This is also why it's good to have things such as the CAVE so that we have better trained soldiers able to kill better and quicker. I tell you this, I quite happily enjoy the little freedoms I have left, and I'd like to keep them, thank you very much!

  • "Nitpick: "Khan" is not a name, it's a title. " Really? If I ever get a chance to choose my own job title, Khan is going to be in it somehere! "The network has crashed! No one can do anything!" "KKHHHhhaaaaannnnnnnn!" Later Erik Z
  • "Nitpick: "Khan" is not a name, it's a title. "

    Really?
    If I ever get a chance to choose my own job title, Khan is going to be in it somehere!

    "The network has crashed! No one can do anything!"

    "KKHHHhhaaaaannnnnnnn!"

    Later
    Erik Z
  • Ahh, the Cave is probably a lot more fun when it's aligned too. Very cool concept, but it has some implementation details to work out yet. Cords in the way, narrow goggle vision, wobbling mirrors, complicated alignment procedure, uneven brightness, screen viewing angle...

    Andrew and I talked about all this the evening I was there. Most of it seems easily solvable.

    What disturbs me very greatly is that Slashdot is treating this like a new thing, and nobody's apologized yet for being so blatantly wrong. I'm kicking myself for not reloading Slashdot one more time before going to sleep, so I could've seen this thing when it was freshly posted, gotten first post, and said "it's been done!" before the knuckleheads went off on those boring war tangents..
  • Yes, it most definitely is a problem. You don't notice it _much_ while you're there, but it's distracting and it takes away from the total immersion. Just like the wobbly mirror at umich's cave, or the effects of misaligned projectors, it's a little distraction that you're subconsciously aware of.

    Not to mention the lag. You'd think that the big ol' Iris box could keep pace with the inputs, but there's a definite, and annoying, time delay before moving and seeing the results. This is particularly vicious in motion parallax situations, where your body is expecting things to move when you move, and they don't.

    Don't get me wrong, Cave quake is very cool. But it has a long way to go until it's as "polished" as the 2d version of Quake.
  • Where is the "academic world"? Is there someplace academics can work without funding? Please tell us about this magic land.

    Academics may love what they do, may work for the joy of discovery, may have a thirst for knowledge, but anyone who doesn't see the money behind it all has severe tunnel vision.

    Yes, you are right, academics DID develop the internet, in so much as monkeys locked in a room full of PDPs did not. In other words, academics did because they were the only group capable of doing so. But the academics in this case were working for other people, whether they felt they were or not. The term "academic" has no moral or military restrictions, and there are "academics" that work for all major branches of the military as well.

    People aren't "nice" just because they are smart. The Internet wasn't developed for commerce, or for the promotion of existential debate, but rather for the exchange of scientific research, research which more often than not received at least some funding from the military.

    Disclaimer: There is funding that is altruistic and peaceloving in nature. But it wasn't the money behind the net.

  • These first generation VR decks are simply image projection on flat surfaces. No 3D objects being created or used in the scene.

    I think Nanobots would be the perfect solution for creating 3D interactive environments.

    Create nanobots about a millimeter in diameter. Make their external surfaces LCD panels, and give them the ability to crawl amongst each other. Nothing fancy, just sort of the nano version of cheerleaders forming a pyramid. That would be enough sophistication to build tables, chairs, and basic objects in a holodeck. As the tech advances, the nanobots get smaller, the objects they create more detailed and lifelike, and before you know it, Sherlock Holmes and Minuet are making their debuts on holodecks around the world.

    P.S. - The book _Star Trek: Strange New Worlds I_ has a great short story that explains how Minuet came into existence...
  • the appropriateness and inappropriateness of war if you beleive that killing people can ever be 'appropriate', then you have been brainwashed. the most basic tenet of any real moral philosophy is the sanctity of human life. it makes the US look foolish on the world stage when they say to milosevic et al. "don't kill people, killing people is a bad bad thing! hell, we think it's such a bad thing, we are going to send OUR army in and kill YOUR people. basically, they are saying "we will teach you not to kill by killing."... tha's like 'fucking for virginity'... it just makes no sense.

    we are the defacto policeman of the world heh, tha's a good one. so basically, the US is hypocritical once again: by this logic, you have completely destroyed the notion of the soveriegn nation-state. so when the US complains about unfair trade practices or illegal immigrants, they are coming from the standpoint of: we can go anywhere in the world and do anything to anyone we want, but if anybody tries to do that to us, well, we'll just have to kill/sanction/brainwash them.

    reduce the cost of war (in terms of casulties on both our side and theirs) how is training your army to be more effective at killing going to reduce the number of casualties, you nitwit! it might reduce the financial cost of war for you, but tha's about it.

    you are going to have two choices why only two? you mean only two that you can think of... there's things like diplomacy, sanctions, the UN war crimes tribunal, etc. now, i don't have a problem if some highly highly skilled commandos capture these murderers so that they can stand trial in a court of law (what a new-age thought!) but, again, fighting to end some fighting makes you look like an idiot.

    But having the biggest and baddest army in the world maximizes the chance that when I go to sleep tonight, death squads won't break into my house and murder my wife as she sleeps next to me. well, this is just wrong again. it is not your army that protects you from domestic deathsquads (i didn't know that was a problem in the states, i guess i'll have to look for them next time i'm down there), it would be your local police dept, as far as i can tell. of course, if you were a little more widely read even of your own citizens' writing, you would know that many of the worst deathsquads in history were armed and trained by the US military. grab some chomsky and re-assess your ideas of the nation-state.


    I think you misunderstand some basic tenants of human thought. You can not tell Milosovic, 'Excuse me, we rather disapprove of you slaughtering thousands of people over there, could you please stop?' and expect him to stop. So unless you plan on selectively eliminating every human that has a potential for violence from the gene pool (which must necessarily involve violence and is usually classified as Genocide since it would end the human race) we will have violent people that must be opposed. And as nice as it is to believe that laying down in the street in front of a few dozen tanks is going to make a HUGE difference, if the driver of the tank just runs you down you're screwed.

    As for Capturing people like milosovic, how exactly do you expect to do that without violence? The man doesn't just stroll down the street by himself.

    I suggest you give up your hopelessly naive world view and whiny apologistic philosophy and go take a look at what REALLY happens when a violent person is given free reign to do what they will.

    Kintanon
  • We have one here at the University of Virginia Center for Advanced Computational Tech. at NASA Langley. It's kinda neat the first few times, but there's the nagging problem of getting things to wrap around the corners of the room properly. To replace it, we've invested in ARC's VisionDome [visiondome.com]. Ooooooo... :-)
  • If I remember correctly, there use to be an SGI OpenGL version of Doom. This alone would make it rather easy to transfer to a CAVE-like system. Since the CAVE in Amsterdam is also equipped (AFAIR) with a very fast network connection allowing it to connect to other CAVEs, multiplayer mode is entirely possible, and probably already done.
  • The address of the CAVE in Amsterdam is:
    http://www2.sara.nl/hec/vr/cave/ [www2.sara.nl].
    I went there a couple of years ago and was suitably impressed. They use several high-end SGI to control the 3D display on several walls (please don't say we could do this with PC's nowadays. You can't). You need to put SGI's 3D glasses (crystal eyes) and use a "magic wand" (a 3D mouse). Several people can enter in the CAVE and view and control 3D animations. One of the most impressive is the one about galaxies merging. You feel you are there, so to speak. Unfortunately, more software is need for these CAVEs.

    Maybe like in start trek, we could use these things for games. VR quake anyone?

  • This is interesting. I suppose that something such as this is not unfeasable. I doubt that it will be very sophisticated at first, but after improvements it could be a valuable tool for the military (as I'm sure they are hoping).

    I think that it will be several years before we see this kind of thing in our homes. The CAVE is only a 10x10 room, according to Popular Science. There are a lot of other possiblities for this type of technology, as you can guess. From holographic "batting cages" to holographic video games. This might be an interesting field to be a pioneer in.

    "You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"

  • Plus the crew spends most of their time in training, not in cleaning and repairing the tank.

    That's an interesting concept - I wonder if they simulate tank breakdowns?

  • Being an ex-military Fire controll tech let me clue you in on something...They may just apear as images on a scope but in your mind you know that thier is a living being on the recieving end of the weopon you just deployed. They have a mother maybe a wife and kids they are a person just like you...They might even be kids...but that is the burdon of a solider/sailor/airmen...You make it sound like it's something out of the book Ender's Game..let me tell you from first hand experience no matter how it is done it haunts you forever..WAR is never a good thing. But being in the postion to lose one is a worse thing. if this can help keep our troops safe than God bless it!

  • Is this a good thing? I think so. I don't think anybody has any illusions about whether or not war involves killing people. A lot of people in North America have WW2-Vet grandparents, but you don't hear a lot about how grandad is numb to violence. All of these training methods are designed to move war towards a Judo-like idea of finesse and economy of effort being a better approach than massive, overwhelming strength.

    I _really_ like the idea of training towards tightly controlled, precision warfare; the phrase "minimum civilian casualties" sounds a lot better to me than "build me a pile of skulls." If a war has to be fought, let it be fought by the warriors, on the battleground. Not by turning schools and suburbs into smoking craters until there's nothing worth defending.

    --

  • Re:bad idea (Score:3)

    by Crixus ( 97721 ) on Sunday February 06, 2000 @10:14PM (#1299450)
    Considering all the problems the holodeck has caused on Star Trek, I don't see anything good coming from this project.

    Amen to that! Either people are getting locked in there with the safety protocols turned off, or people are getting addicted to the alternate realities that you can create in there.

    Although I do not have an addictive personality (unless you count my recent addiction to /.) I could see myself possibly getting addicted to a holodeck type of technology.

    Hell, who wouldn't want to go live in their favorite TV show brought to life?

    Let's just hope they never create a Commander Data, he was always malfunctioning too. :-)

  • Maybe we should go back to fighting hand-to-hand, with each party involved in a given dispute dispatching a small group of champions to decide the outcome of the battle. Its hard to enjoy killing when you have to watch your enemy die and you have to take a bath in his blood. Well, at least you have to appreciate and understand your common humanity, which is the concept I think you were aiming for.

    OTOH, at least nobody is going to get killed ort injured in these training simulations. And if there is any kind of war in teh near future , simulation programs (on both a -macro and a -micro scale) should help to at least make the battle more efficient (sounds sick, I know) and last a shorter amount of time (maybe even kill less people!!)

    As for myself, I definitely think that all war should be fought by the politicians and diplomats presiding over "the peace process" (funny how they call it that), and that all such battles should be fought with battle axes, halberds, and bastard swords. The Beastly combo of 'Haglike' Hillary and 'Clever' Clinton should hold us in good stead. Maybe then international relations will be approached with a little more sanity, less concentration on overt political/economical goals, and more respect towards human life.

    Plus, I bet the televised combat would get great ratings on both countries, no matter the winner. You could donate the advertising money spent by the major corporations on humanitarian relief efforts. Plus wed have fewer members of congress and the executive staff. Everybody would win, even if we lost....

  • The military uses many complex acronyms for just about everything, and they do lots of research including primates... didn't somebody once say that if you put a million monkeys at typewriters and tell them to create acronyms, they would eventually produce all of the recursive acronyms?

    To that, I can only add that I expect that monkey team to win, place and show in the perl poetry contest, too.

  • The Cave @ SGI (Score:4)

    by connor_macleod ( 113687 ) on Sunday February 06, 2000 @10:24PM (#1299473) Homepage
    I originally saw this in an SGI magazine about 5 years ago ... the Cave was a cubic room with projections on all sides and one of the environments was a world where you created life (plants, butterflies, music) through your movements.

    Here are a couple of links to the Cave @ SGI: http://www.cio.com/archive/050197_et_content.html [cio.com]
    http://www.sgi.com.au/news/cave.html [sgi.com.au]

    Very cool, the contact for the second one is in Sydney ;)
    -
  • http://www.cave.vt.edu/ [vt.edu]

    Besides wearing glasses as someone mentioned, you use a "wand" or 3D mouse to control things. When I was working on my master's degree at Tech, I did a project with the CAVE for a class called Computer Supported Cooperative Work. We did some of the first investigations into hooking up multiple CAVEs so that people could collaborate with each other, seeing each other as an avatar in the CAVE. Unfortuntely, the link to the paper is broken, but here [odu.edu] is some info on other projects that grew out of that class project.

  • first, this is not the realm of poly sci, it's poly phil. poly sci is something else.

    now, on to your points:

    the appropriateness and inappropriateness of war if you beleive that killing people can ever be 'appropriate', then you have been brainwashed. the most basic tenet of any real moral philosophy is the sanctity of human life. it makes the US look foolish on the world stage when they say to milosevic et al. "don't kill people, killing people is a bad bad thing! hell, we think it's such a bad thing, we are going to send OUR army in and kill YOUR people. basically, they are saying "we will teach you not to kill by killing."... tha's like 'fucking for virginity'... it just makes no sense.

    we are the defacto policeman of the world heh, tha's a good one. so basically, the US is hypocritical once again: by this logic, you have completely destroyed the notion of the soveriegn nation-state. so when the US complains about unfair trade practices or illegal immigrants, they are coming from the standpoint of: we can go anywhere in the world and do anything to anyone we want, but if anybody tries to do that to us, well, we'll just have to kill/sanction/brainwash them.

    reduce the cost of war (in terms of casulties on both our side and theirs) how is training your army to be more effective at killing going to reduce the number of casualties, you nitwit! it might reduce the financial cost of war for you, but tha's about it.

    you are going to have two choices why only two? you mean only two that you can think of... there's things like diplomacy, sanctions, the UN war crimes tribunal, etc. now, i don't have a problem if some highly highly skilled commandos capture these murderers so that they can stand trial in a court of law (what a new-age thought!) but, again, fighting to end some fighting makes you look like an idiot.

    But having the biggest and baddest army in the world maximizes the chance that when I go to sleep tonight, death squads won't break into my house and murder my wife as she sleeps next to me. well, this is just wrong again. it is not your army that protects you from domestic deathsquads (i didn't know that was a problem in the states, i guess i'll have to look for them next time i'm down there), it would be your local police dept, as far as i can tell. of course, if you were a little more widely read even of your own citizens' writing, you would know that many of the worst deathsquads in history were armed and trained by the US military. grab some chomsky and re-assess your ideas of the nation-state.

    canadaman

  • CAVE-type systems have been around for a while, but aren't that useful. The joints where flat screens come together look awful. You need a curved surface, and a few systems do that. Then you want serious resolution; a hemisphere probably needs something like 10^7 pixels minimum. And you need a good frame rate, or the strobing effects are seriously annoying. If the screen is more than a few feet away, though, you can dispense with the 3D goggles.

    More fundamentally, other than showing ride films and simulating shooting people, there's not much you can usefully do with the things. Like most VR, it's a technology in search of a killer app. High-resolution wide-screen videoconferencing, maybe?

    (Hmm. As a technical concept, high-resolution (HDTV/SVGA or better) wide-screen video conferencing over wideband Internet connections might work. When the camera is fixed and the background is static, video bandwidth is relatively modest. "Relatively" is the operative word here; about 10Mb/sec is probably needed, although you wouldn't fill the pipe all the time.)

  • Is this really a good thing? (Score:5)

    by Akaji Monkey ( 138442 ) on Sunday February 06, 2000 @09:59PM (#1299514)

    I think this is all part of the "virtualizing" of war. Think back to the Gulf War, with all those videos from the video-guided bombs as they home in on the target. It doesn't feel like they're actually killing people, does it?

    I'm willing to bet that people who've been trained in machines like this one don't see it as training for killing - it's all just a big video game, right? Doesn't hurt anyone, right?

    How long will it take before they start representing "targets" as icons rather than real video? "I just wiped out three of those blinking blue squares - what do you suppose they were?"

    Yeah, let's fight a war where one side never has to see any blood, and all the bleeding's done by the other side. Go, U.S. Army! You guys must be real proud of your achievements.
  • Maybe we should go back to fighting hand-to-hand, with each party involved in a given dispoute dispatching a small group of champions to decide the outcome of the battle.

    We already have this: It's called football.

  • virtual war started with rifles when you no longer had to experience a human die by your own hand. We should settle all further global crisis with Rainbow Six matches.
  • Check this out: http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/new/c6page.html Iowa State University is building a fully-immersive CAVE called the C6. The normal configuration just has 3 walls and a floor. You can see the commercial version at: http://www.pyramidsystems.com/products.html

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