Roger Smith, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation, spoke with Michael Peck.

Q. Do you see the military using serious games for the Wii and Xbox 360?

A. We wanted to get on to the Microsoft Xbox because it only costs $300, when a PC may cost $1,000. They did not want to work with the military. They gave us three reasons. Number one, when they sell an Xbox 360, they lose money. It costs more to make an Xbox 360 than to sell it in the store. The only way they make that revenue up is by kids going out and buying an average of 17 of those games a year. Their concern was that the military would develop a game for the Xbox 360 and buy thousands of the boxes and buy exactly one game for each of them.

Their second concern was that the military could cause a shortage of Xbox 360s.

The third reason was around the question of, “do we want the Xbox 360 to be seen as having the flavor of a weapon? Do we want Mom and Dad knowing that their kid is buying the same game console as the military trains the SEALs and Rangers on?” They said we will not give the military a license to burn a game that runs on the Xbox 360. So we’re not pursuing it at all because they won’t. As I talk to people in my own organization and other parts of the military, I find many people don’t know that fact. Everybody is going to get around to looking into it and they don’t know that some people have already looked into it.

Q. What improvements can we expect in realism, portability and cost from game technology?

A. Portability is interesting. One of the things that’s happening, and there is nobody addressing the issue, is that, for example, if we purchase [the Engagement Skills Trainer (EST) 2000] and it has game engine A, and we do the same thing with [the Close Combat Tactical Trainer] and game engine B and [the Aviation Combined Arms Tactical Trainer] and game engine C, do you know what we end up with? We’re breaking some of the levels of interoperability that we have been working on for the last decade. We are going to put in game engines that have different ways of representing the terrain, different levels of screen fidelity, that have different networking protocols on the backend. And we will be back to where we were a decade ago, asking ourselves, how do we make all these game engines interoperable?

Q. How will gaming technology affect full-sized physical simulators?

A. An EST 2000 is one of our shooting simulators. The vendor for that is already replacing the visuals with the Crytek software, which is essentially the software from the “Crysis” game. They’re trying to sell the next generation where all of the visuals are game visuals. We haven’t bought that version yet, but I think it’s just a matter of time. I think for any of our virtual systems, there is going to come a point where we do a recompete for the visualization piece, for the terrain database and for the visual appearance of the helicopters and buildings. When that competition comes, I think the winner will be a game engine.

Q. What about increased fidelity?

A. What you see in the game world is so close to real that I don’t think we’re going to be focused on making the camouflage better on the uniforms. But the one thing that is still missing in games, like it is in our simulations, is truly dynamic environments. Environments where you can go in and blow a hole in the wall, blast a hole in the ground or dig a hole in the ground, and that hole will be there. All of the environments in games and military sims are very static. So you can create a crater, but only a nicely formed crater, or you can knock down a building but not a tree. That’s what’s got to be the next thing — to make these environments dynamic.

Q. For serious games, do you see more of an emphasis on teaching cognitive skills?

A. Cognitive and non-combat skills. We have a number of maintenance trainers already. Games haven’t penetrated there yet, but I think they will. So I think we will see a game-based trainer to teach you how to do maintenance on vehicles. We already have seen vendors show us their prototypes of this, and in a few cases, a large system integrator will ask them to build it in-house as part of a program. I also think you will see more games used for doing medical. I think we’re just beginning to figure out how to convey knowledge through the game interface, and how to give medical people a GUI [graphical user interface] that works for them.

Q. Are we at a stage where gaming technology is good enough for realistic mission rehearsal?

A. The lower-level units have never had mission-rehearsal tools. There are mission-rehearsal tools, especially for the Air Force, but we haven’t built them for the guys on the ground. Their tools have been paper maps. This is another community to be broached. If the serious games people said, “We’ve made our way into the training environment, now let’s make our way into mission rehearsal,” they would find it similar to breaking in all over again. They would have to convince that community that they actually have a requirement for those kind of tools and show how they solve a problem.