The newest version of the Army’s 3D virtual training game, Virtual Battle Space 3, allows players to personalize their avatar in the simulation and the scenes and scenarios look much more real to boot.
Using new human dimensioning modeling within Virtual Battle Space 3, called VBS3, Soldiers using the educational will installed personal characteristics, including their very own height, weight, Army Physical Fitness Test scores or even their weapons qualifications scores, “so then the avatar will only be as capable because the individual Soldier,” said Robert Munsey, an analyst with U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Capability Manager — Virtual & Gaming.
Soldiers who’re not qualified on a weapons system will be unable to take advantage of it inside the simulation. And in contrast to in some games, where every player is represented at the screen with a hulking, ripped avatar — with VBS3, an overweight Soldier can also be overweight at the screen. And with the system’s fatigue modeling, his character gets tired faster too, Munsey said.
Munsey said throughout the game, a fatigue bar on the top left hand side of the screen will “go down an awful lot quicker” for someone that has scored a 160 APFT score, versus the person that has an ordinary at 220, or the “APFT stud or studette at 300-plus.”
“If the Soldier is a type of 270-300 physical training performers, the fatigue model will model that during the sport,” he said. “Then the leaders, the small unit leaders have the aptitude to appreciate the performance in their squad.”
Soldiers who’ve used the system have noticed the variation, Munsey said.
“When they tested this last year, among the Soldiers said ‘I look fat,’” Munsey said. “And any other Soldier sitting right next to him said ‘that’s since you are fat.’”
The Army’s VBS3 system is a multi-user “realistic semi-immersive environment” that enables units, usually company and below, to coach at home station on greater than 150 battle drills, platoon level collective tasks, combined maneuver tasks and other collective tasks.
In the cheap-constrained environment, company commanders can put each in their Soldiers in front of a networked computer running the system and train things inexpensively before going out to the sphere — where things get costlier.
“It’s really mostly focused on the company level and platoon level — it’s a value-saver within the fact it gives us an opportunity to do the crawl/walk phases of your training before you exit to training areas and execute,” said Capt. Chuck A. Williams, field operations branch, TCM-V&G. “You get an opportunity to see bugs and kinks and rehearse before you exit. And also you don’t get available and waste fuel and ammo messing things up.”
Also new in VBS3 are “ambience”-related plugins that permit the sport to inject crowds of simulated personnel right into a simulation.
“Soldiers maneuvering through an atmosphere, whether an urban environment or a fringing and rural environment, are going to peer the traditional pattern of life so it’s not vacated of civilians,” said Munsey.
Something called “insurgent ambience” allows the pc to simulate the activities of an insurgent cell “so the insurgent cell can initiate the attacks,” Munsey said.
With fewer training staff now available, computer-controlled “red team” inputs “allow the teacher to have the pc play a number of the portions of the OPFOR to fulfill the educational objectives of the educational commander.”
Munsey said commanders at Fort Hood, Texas; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.; Fort Campbell, Ky.; Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Fort Riley, Kan., have previously mandated using VBS2 as a simulation before execution within the live environment. Stryker units, he said, don’t have any virtual simulator in their own, but were ready to train on Stryker’s contained in the VBS2 system.
“The Stryker community have been using VBS2 an awful lot longer before the military did — a couple of year or two before the military,” Munsey said. “They have lots of experience and here’s one in all their preferred simulations.”
The Army’s VBS3 was made available March 31. Units can get access to the newest version of the instructor at https://milgaming.army.mil/VBS3.
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