Chapter 72 13.6 A seamlessly distributed army

Jordan Weissman and his buddy Ross Bibercock are cadets at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and masters of the fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons.Once out at sea, they glimpsed a supertanker bridge simulator, an entire wall of monitors that realistically simulated a route through 50 ports around the world.They want to play this thing to death.Sorry, it's not a toy, the officer told them.But it was a toy, and they both knew that.So they decided to create something of their own—a secret dream world that others could enter.Materials included plywood, electronics scavenged from Radio Shack, and some homemade software.In addition, they have to pay entry fees.

In 1990, Weissman and Bibercock launched "Mech Fighter".Funded by the lucrative profits they make from role-playing games, they built a $2.5 million arcade at their arcade in a shopping mall on the North Pier section of downtown Chicago, open 24/7. (Other game centers quickly opened up across the country after receiving new investment from Walt Disney's grandson, Tim Disney.) When I asked on the phone how to get there, the answerer said, "Which way is as loud as you can get." correct".A crowd of rowdy teenagers lingers in front of the Star Wars-style store; T-shirts emblazoned with the words "No Brave, No Hero" hang for sale.

There are uncanny similarities between Mechatroopers and SIMNET: 12 crowded boxes fixed to the concrete floor and connected to the grid.The outside of the box is futuristic with incomprehensible slogans ("Beware of the explosion!") scrawled on the outside;A sliding seat, two computer screens, a microphone to communicate with teammates, and a few control switches.You steer with the pedals (just like on a tank), press the gas to accelerate, and the joystick to fire.As soon as the whistle blew, the game kicked off.Immersed in a red-earth desert world, you chase other long-legged tanks (a scene from Star Wars: Strikes Back), and get chased by others.The rules of the game are as simple as war: kill or be killed.It's cool to drive a tank through this red desert.The other "mechas" running wild in this simulated world are manned by 11 other players curled up in crates next to each other.Half of them should be on your end, but when it gets hot, it's hard to tell who's who.I can see the names of my teammates on the monitor: Dabing, Ratman, Genghis.Apparently I'm just "Kevin" on their monitors because I forgot the "nickname" before I started.We all belong to the kind of newbies who are killed by others early.However, I am a reporter here to interview.Who are they?

According to a Michigan State University study of avid gamers, they're mostly unmarried men in their twenties.The report surveyed veterans who had played at least 200 rounds (which cost $6 each!).In fact, some masters lived and lived in the center of "Mecha Soldiers" as their home.I talked to some people who played thousands of games.According to these masters of "Mecha Soldiers", just getting used to driving those devices and using basic weapons to attack, you need to play about 5 rounds, and then play 50 rounds before you can master the technique of cooperating with others.In fact, teamwork is what this game is all about.These masters regard the stormtroopers as a "social contract".For these masters (all but one are male), they believe that wherever new online virtual worlds appear, special groups of humans will always appear and live in them.When asked what compelled them to return to the simulated world of "Mecha Soldiers" again and again, these masters mentioned "other people", "able to find qualified opponents", "fame and honor", "teammates who cooperate well ".

The survey asked 47 avid gamers what improvements needed to be made to Mechatrooper.Only two people responded that they should work on "improving authenticity".Most people want a game with a lower price, fewer software glitches, and more of the same stuff (more mechs, more terrain, more missiles).What they hope most is that there are more players in this simulated world. This is the voice of the network.Constantly adding new players.The more connections they have, the more valuable my connections become.This shows that these addicted players have realized that increasing the fullness of the network can achieve more "realism" than increasing the resolution of the environment.The so-called authenticity first refers to the power of co-evolution, and secondly refers to the six megapixels.

Quantitative change leads to qualitative change, and more makes the difference.Keep increasing the number of grains of sand from the first grain of sand, and you get a dune, which is completely different from a single grain of sand.By increasing the number of players in a gaming network, what do you get... what?It's something completely different...a distributed existence, a virtual world, a hive mind, an online community. While the military's behemoth size can stifle innovation, its sheer size allows the military to experiment with grand schemes -- something nimble commercial enterprises cannot.The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—a highly respected innovative research and development agency within the Department of Defense—has developed an ambitious plan of action beyond SIMNET.What it wants is a twenty-first century style emulation.When Colonel Jack Thorpe, from the agency, was briefing the military on the push for the new simulation, he put a few slides on the projector.One of them reads:

And another reads: In fact, the key idea Thorp was trying to sell to senior officers and military entrepreneurs was that by applying simulation to every step of the process, they could get more cost-effective weapons.In other words, use simulations to design, use simulations to test before throwing money at them, and use simulations to train users and officers before playing with the real thing so they can gain a strategic advantage. "Simulate before building" has been developed to a certain extent.Northrop didn't use blueprints when they built the B-2 stealth bomber; instead, they used computer simulations.Some industry experts have called the B-2 "the most complex simulation system ever built."The entire plan was designed as a computer simulation so complex and accurate that Northrop didn't bother to build a prototype of the multibillion-dollar aircraft before actually building it.Typically, a system consisting of 30,000 components will necessarily require 50% of the components to be redesigned during the actual construction process.Northrop's "simulation-first" approach reduced the proportion of redesigned parts to 3 percent.

When Boeing explored the design concept of the tilt-rotor VS-X, it first built it in virtual reality.Once the sim was built, Boeing sent more than a hundred engineers and employees inside the sim to evaluate it.Speaking of the advantages of simulated construction, let me give a small example: During the evaluation, Boeing engineers found that a key pressure gauge reading in the maintenance bay was difficult to read, no matter how hard the crew looked.As a result the maintenance bay was redesigned, saving millions of dollars in this alone. The nifty simulation platform is code-named ADST, a quirky acronym for "Advanced Distributed Simulation Technology."The key word here is "distributed".Colonel Thorpe is quite visionary in what he calls distributed simulation: a seamlessly connected, distributed military/industrial complex; a seamlessly connected, distributed military; a seamlessly distributed, hyper-realistic war .Imagine a thin film of optical fibers covering the globe, opening the door to a world of real-time, broadband, multi-user 3D simulations.Any soldier who wants to connect to a hyper-real battle, or any defense manufacturer who wants to test his future products in virtual reality, can do so simply by connecting The highway will serve their purpose.Tens of thousands of decentralized emulators all plugged into a single virtual world; thousands of emulators—virtual jeeps, virtual ships, navies with electronic goggles, AI-generated shadow troops — all merge into one seamless, shared consciousness simulacra.