Let’s Get Serious:
Gaming Techniques for
Simulation and Training
Jeff LeBlanc, MAK Technologies
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
About MAK
 Who
we are
 Founded
in 1990; Based in Cambridge, MA
Founders
worked on SIMNET team
 Pioneer
in adapting game technology for
military tactical trainers
 What
we do
 Develop
distributed simulation tools &
toolkits for developers
 Use our tools to build military tactical
trainers
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
Serious Games
 Computer
and video (console) games can be
used for more than just entertainment
 Education
/ edutainment
 Marketing and advertising
 Social policy and management
 Training
 The
Serious Games marketplace is huge,
rivaling the gaming or entertainment industries
 Serious Games aim to provide training and
education to the user, while also providing and
engaging and entertaining experience
 The
latter supports the former
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
Serious Games History
 Army
Battlezone, by Atari in 1980
 Late 80s saw SIMNET, by BBN, distributed
real-time simulation
 Edutainment was tried as a business model in
the 1990s. It failed to be profitable…
 Marine Doom, 1998, early attempt at training
 Serious Games Initiative launched in 2000
 goal:
"to help usher in a new series of policy
education, exploration, and management tools
utilizing state of the art computer game designs,
technologies, and development skills"
 Use game development techniques and
technologies to build ‘serious’ tools
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
SIMNET
 Military
simulations have tended to be a
bit "heavy"
 Dedicated
hardware
 Physical proximity
 Expectations of mechanical accuracy
 SIMNET
changed that, providing a
networked multi-user interactive
simulation
 Support
for hundreds of simultaneous users
 Grandfather of today's MMOs?
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
Sons of SIMNET
 Close
Combat Tactical Trainer (CCTT)
 Improved
visual displays, networking
 Spearhead
(MAK, 1998)
 Used
many of the same underlying
technologies
 Showed a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS)
PC could be used for training
 Gamespot gave it a 7.4!
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
Seriously Unreal Gaming
 Gaming
technology began to drive the
simulation world
 America's Army (2002), initially released
as a recruiting tool
 Based
on the Unreal 2 engine
 Adopted as a platform to build trainer apps
on
 MAK
Game-Link, a toolkit to allow
Unreal games to interoperate with sims
and trainers built to industry networking
standards (DIS/HLA)
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
Game-Link
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
DIS/HLA Protocols
 Distributed
Interactive Simulation (DIS) is a
standard conducting “massively multiplayer”
simulations
 Entity
state information encoded into Protocol Data
Units (PDUs) and broadcast over the simulation
network
 Damage
state, direction/orientation vectors, articulations,
etc
 Entity
Type information encoded as 8-bit enums
describing platform, country, and capabilities
 Example:
 Dead
“1:2:225:1:3”1” is a US F-16 Falcon
Reckoning is performed between updates
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
DIS/HLA Protocols
 High
Level Architecture (HLA) came around in
1996, providing an object-oriented
specification for distributed simulations
 Communication is managed by a Runtime
Infrastructure (RTI)
 “middleware”
 Individual
members of the simulation are
called federates. The total environment of the
simulators is a federation.
 The Federation Object Model (FOM)
describes what the shared objects and events
(interactions) are allowed in the simulation
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
Interoperability Issues
 By
adhering to the standards,
simulations / trainers can be developed
independently and work together
 Important issues
 Acceptable
Models,
 Terrain
entity types
if required
database
Coordinate
systems
 Thousands
of entities
 Expected visuals
Non-realistic
display
Symbology (2525B)
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
Types of Serious Games
 Social
Impact Games lists over 200
games in a variety of categories:
 Education
("Algebots", "MeCHem")
 Public Policy ("Cyberbudget", "So You Want
To Be a Brooklyn Judge")
 Health and Wellness ("Ben's Game", "ReMission")
 Business ("In$ider", "Virtual Leader")
 Military training ("Battle Command 2010")
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
Battle Command 2010


Staff planning trainer
built using MÄK’s VRForces simulation
engine
Users role-play staff
officer positions in
distributed game
environment


Maneuver,
Intelligence, Fire
Support, Engineer,
Logistics
Rehearse tactics &
planning at brigade &
below
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
VR-Forces
 Object-oriented
toolkit for
 Networked
synthetic environments
 Requirements & operational analysis
 Simulation for strategic &
tactical decision-makers
 Embedded trainers
 Mission rehearsal
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
MAK Stealth
 3D
virtual environment visualizer
 Provide
the “God’s eye” view of the total
simulation
 Built on the Vega Prime graphics engine
 Game-like appearance, but different goals
Non-realistic
rendering
Thousands of entities
Gigabyte-sized terrains
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
Demo Time!
 Time
for a demonstration of VR-Forces
and Stealth
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.
In Conclusion
 The
Serious Games industry is
entrenched, and growing
 Game technologies are providing a lowcost alternative to the old ‘do it yourself’
solutions
 Be aware of, and involved in, existing
standards
 Questions?
©MÄK Technologies, Inc.