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#3722312 - 01/21/13 08:48 PM Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2  
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http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/a...meTraining.aspx

Quote:
The Army and Navy are seeking out video game technology to engage young soldiers and sailors, and both services plan on awarding major contracts in 2013 for virtual, PC-based training.

The industry needs to find a way to get past the older code that’s sitting out there,” he said. “They [soldiers] look at these simulators, and they don’t take them seriously because they don’t look as good as what they’re playing in their living rooms.

Currently, the Army is conducting a competition for the flagship of its Games for Training program, with an award of approximately $44.5 million over five years. It wants another first-person shooter to replace Bohemia Interactive’s Virtual Battlespace 2 (VBS2).

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#3722396 - 01/21/13 11:00 PM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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LOL, now the DoD is complaining about eye candy!



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#3722491 - 01/22/13 02:32 AM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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Heehee biggrin Its a slippery slope from here. Its Rainbow6 to COD all over again.


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#3723712 - 01/24/13 01:38 AM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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Thank goodness. It's about time.

The thing about VBS-2 isnt the graphics, but the horrible gameplay. The terribly programmed AI that normally just run off and die and the bulky and outdated (and UGLY) engine that make it such a pain to use the system.


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#3723716 - 01/24/13 01:45 AM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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Why not Arma3?


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#3723797 - 01/24/13 04:11 AM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: Coot]  
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Originally Posted By: Coot
Why not Arma3?

+1

I was thinking a contemporary version of ARMA 3 or bring in the boys from Ground Branch!

#3724434 - 01/25/13 02:13 AM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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Anyone play ArmA 3 yet?

It doesn't look much better than ArmA 2, personally speaking.

I'm just not a fan of Bohemia. Id rather see a simulation based off the Frostbite or Unreal Engines


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#3724463 - 01/25/13 03:05 AM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: Apocalypse31]  
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Originally Posted By: Apocalypse31
Anyone play ArmA 3 yet?

It doesn't look much better than ArmA 2, personally speaking.

I'm just not a fan of Bohemia. Id rather see a simulation based off the Frostbite or Unreal Engines



Despite having been a OFP:CWC, OFP:Resistance and Armed Assault fan and currently being an ArmA2 fan mostly because there's absolutely no other MODERN FPS/Tactical shooter game besides ArmA2 I must admit that you're right when you say that the ArmA's engine gameplay is very "clunky".

But it's also a fact that there's no other game engine that I know of that has a comproved capability of multiplayer games with large dozens of players (maybe more than a hundred) together with hundreds of AI units while modeling maps with the size of hundreds of square kilometers with enterable buildings where players can roam freely around the map without any kind of limitations and at the same time modeling all sorts of vehicles ranging from cars, tanks, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, boats, etc... where several players can even control the same vehicle (for example one player driving a tank while an another player is controlling the gunner position of that same tank and another player controlling the commander station of this same tank). What are the other games or game engines that allow this??

#3724506 - 01/25/13 05:22 AM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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I haven't been to IITSEC for a couple of years, but for about 6 years I had to work it every year and never once saw anything that could beat VBS in sheer scope. You would always see something that could do one aspect much better, but never anything that could do half as much, even half as good, let alone have even 1/4 of the content.

Everyone wants/wanted to come up with the VBS "killer" because there is a LOT of $$$ to be made, but from talking to people who still work out in Research Park here in Orlando doing heavy sim work, anything to replace VBS2 basically has to be VBS2, only better, but different. Good luck with that. Just generating the same amount of content would run into the six figures. I used to work for managers who would just come to us every couple of years to write up a requirements doc on what it would actually take to make a replacement. They could never actually believe us when we told them the amount of models needed, the terrain, etc. Just think about what VBS2 can do, what is has and what it would take to duplicate EVERYTHING in a new engine.

I've been away from contracting a few years, but right now VBS2 from what other devs and trainers tell me is pretty entrenched. Just replacing it and writing new training programs would be huge. Also there are TONS of VBS2 related contracts out there spending millions that you never hear about as well. FOr example, I know a guy who is helping to just convert years of old openflight content to VBS2 format. I doubt any of it will ever get used honestly. If I had a penny from eveyone's paycheck who earned it doing something tied to VBS2 I would be pretty well off.

Anyone can complain about certain aspects of the engine but to replace it would take ungodly amounts of time and money. Look at how much money they thew at the Crytek engine contracts to try and get that going. Looked awesome, but from what I was told, was a HUGE failure. I thought if any engine would work other that all the openflight/metavr sims, it would be the Crytek contract.

If they are serious about replacing it, they need to just award it and start from the ground up rather than expecting to find a replacement all done and ready to go with the same features and content plus whatever new requirements they are throwing in. It's just not going to happen.

#3724791 - 01/25/13 04:18 PM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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Well actually I always had my strong doubts that the Crytek engine could or would ever be capable of modeling the same or similar amount of content as the ArmA/VBS engine does. Crytek engine seems IMO to be clearly designed and oriented to small map games (such as Crysis).
At best the Crytek engine could model a small scale tactical simulation similar to Ghost Recon 1 or SWAT4 with a few land and low speed vehicles such as tanks operating very closely to the players.
The "proof" of this is for example the new Chris Roberts space sim game (the "spiritual" sucessor of Wing Commander/Privateer) where the team lead by Chris Roberts is having a very hard time to model very large maps and this in a space simulator which naturaly have maps full of nothing (space or empty space). Now imagine in a simulation similar to VBS/ArmA where the maps are full of stuff!

IMO, the only engine that IMO could somehow compete and model similar capabilities as the VBS/ArmA engine is the Outerra engine. Look here for more detail regarding the Outerra engine:
http://www.outerra.com/

What's interesting about the Outerra is that it models the entire planet and it also allows multiple platforms ranging from men/soldiers, to ground vehicles, air vehicles (helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft), etc... Of course one thing is the engine and it's theorical capabilities other thing is the real capabilities when you have a simulation with lots of units and players mixed in a multiplayer enviourment.


Apart from this I completly agree and understand what ebud says and I also agree that perhaps the best way to replace VBS with something better looking but with the same or better capabilities you'll probably need to develop something "from scratch" which of course would take LOTS OF MONEY!

#3724845 - 01/25/13 05:36 PM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: ricnunes]  
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Originally Posted By: ricnunes
Originally Posted By: Apocalypse31
Anyone play ArmA 3 yet?

It doesn't look much better than ArmA 2, personally speaking.

I'm just not a fan of Bohemia. Id rather see a simulation based off the Frostbite or Unreal Engines



Despite having been a OFP:CWC, OFP:Resistance and Armed Assault fan and currently being an ArmA2 fan mostly because there's absolutely no other MODERN FPS/Tactical shooter game besides ArmA2 I must admit that you're right when you say that the ArmA's engine gameplay is very "clunky".

But it's also a fact that there's no other game engine that I know of that has a comproved capability of multiplayer games with large dozens of players (maybe more than a hundred) together with hundreds of AI units while modeling maps with the size of hundreds of square kilometers with enterable buildings where players can roam freely around the map without any kind of limitations and at the same time modeling all sorts of vehicles ranging from cars, tanks, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, boats, etc... where several players can even control the same vehicle (for example one player driving a tank while an another player is controlling the gunner position of that same tank and another player controlling the commander station of this same tank). What are the other games or game engines that allow this??


The game engine for Planetside 2 is probably the most current that does what you say here. There's no AI at the moment, because it's all player vs. player.

Considering that SOE has a section of the PS2 website devoted entirely to the game engine (they call it ForgeLight), I wouldn't be surprised if they plan to use it in other SOE titles or license it for others.

Last edited by LugnutUSA; 01/25/13 05:36 PM.

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#3724936 - 01/25/13 07:02 PM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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Frostbite and Unreal rely on tiny maps (compared to OFP/Arma/VBS) to get the detail up and the performance to stay decent.

They don't stream their levels, which is what you need to get good detail + good performance + large scope.

I would say DCS could do it, as the Georgia map is quite large and with Combined Arms you can now do Arma-like stuff there with vehicles...BUT there is no infantry modeled yet, just bailed pilots, the ground objects up close make OFP look like DX11...
Maybe in several years DCS could do it, depending on what EDGE brings.

What about the Fallout/Elder Scrolls engine? That streams and has fairly large maps (albeit with alarming "pop up" of things that aren't that distant).



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The anteater is wearing the bagel because he's a reindeer princess. -- my 4 yr old daughter
#3725045 - 01/25/13 09:26 PM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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The Fallout engine does inded model large maps but the enterable building interiors are in fact diferent levels separated from the main (large) map. With the Fallout engine you have one map for each enterable building plus the large "outside" map therefore in Fallout you don't have a single map but several maps which means that when you enter a building the building's map will load (and the game will "pause") and when the player exits the building the outside world map is loaded (pausing the game again). Besides and probably due to the reason that I just mentioned the Fallout engine doesn't seem to have any multiplayer capability.
IMO, these 2 reasons means that the Fallout engine doesn't seem suitable for a VBS (or ArmA) sucessor.

#3725185 - 01/26/13 01:02 AM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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Using something lie VBS or arma for training is all well and good. But there are many things a unit commander would like to train on that it simply can not do. Indeed, the eye candy thing IS important to some 19 year old private. If they do not connect with the training device it becomes a vary expensive piece of poop. I have used a few and most in fact are over priced jokes. Unreal engine and those.........they look pretty but are even more a step backwards as far as training aids IMO. The defense guys are on the right track looking to reduce costs using game tech. But they also IMO need to get people in the developnment who have actually none the damned job. Not some silly geek guy that plays with an m16 during a 2 minute here you go fest.

Training things like vehicle recovery, call for fire, or even basic first aid tasks are MORE needed than shoot and move stuff. That can be trained by checking out weapons and go TRAIN. Just saying. Light vehicle gunnery that is legit would also be nice. OMG I got forced to use some of those...........totally freaken awful! At a million a piece.......total garbage. My unit used it once then backed it away to hopefully never be seen again.

#3725554 - 01/26/13 06:51 PM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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I love the way Outerra looks in its videos. Wish you could port those same terrains over into Arma without having to rebuild the whole thing.


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#3726027 - 01/27/13 07:53 PM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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I would say that the Delta Force engine (Joint Operations, Delta Force Xtreme) is a much better choice than the ArmA/VBS2 engine. Much smoother.


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#3726625 - 01/28/13 10:38 PM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: Apocalypse31]  
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Originally Posted By: Apocalypse31
I would say that the Delta Force engine (Joint Operations, Delta Force Xtreme) is a much better choice than the ArmA/VBS2 engine. Much smoother.


You must be joking right?? eek

While ArmA/VBS soldier movement/animations are inded clunky the Delta Force engine is the exact oposite -> Too "smooth", so smooth that it doesn't look like a soldier's movement at, it looks more like a soap sliding on a icy surface (or something like that) so IMO the movement in both Delta Force and ArmA/VBS doesn't look right (for diferent and opposing reasons).
And not to mention other stuff like AI -> If some of you complain about ArmA/VBS AI (yes it has it's faults but lets face it, it's by far the best AI of the genre) I wonder what to say about the Delta Force AI which is completly stupid and incompetent where an enemy AI soldier is capable of emptying an entire AK-47 clip firing at you at 5 meters away (from you) while sometimes it can kill you with a single shot 500 meters away with the same AK-47!!

#3727025 - 01/29/13 03:53 PM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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Don't forget in Joint Ops I had an AI firing at me from the other side of a hill, in other words LOS was totally blocked with meters and meters of solid ground between us, forever! He literally did not stop until someone else got him from the side. How did he know I was there? How could he see through a hill?





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#3727219 - 01/29/13 07:25 PM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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Outterra looks good but who knows how well it works. They don't need an entire planet modeled. Honestly I didn't even think of DCS, but now that I think about it, it seems like the perfect solution for a combined arms Simulator. However it hasn't really shown that it is capable of it. And as it stands now I don't think it is, the engine would need a rewrite to take advantage of multi-threading. Don't blame the engine for anything on the DCS forums though. It's the PC's fault. Even though I get the same FPS (q6700 @3g) as i7 @4.4ghz, but but but but but its a CPU restricted game (ENGINE RESTRICTED) /rant

#3728071 - 01/31/13 07:05 AM Re: Army and Navy Looking to Replace VBS 2 [Re: kramer]  
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Why does everyone think the military wants some crazy ulimate combined arms sim? They want a training aid to teach selected tasks that are expensive, difficult, or dangerous to do. Not the worlds most realistic infantry simulator. That is silly. It will NEVER be close to the real deal. But basic soldier tasks. Or gunnery tasks of large equipment etc etc is I am sure what they are after at cheaper prices than bloated defense contractors charge. VBS2 i simply can not imagine being used at the Private level. Nothing there is useful to lowest levels. At platoon leadership and above it may have value. But from basic soldier perspective a waste of time. better to run around in the woods yelling bang bang at each other. At least you will get some exercise and not turn into a fat #%&*$#.

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