The littoral combat ship (LCS) is poised to be an uncommon vessel in the Navy’s fleet. The ship’s training is planned to be just as unique, using simulators and virtual training rather than live practice aboard a ship at sea. But unlike the bulky, dated graphics associated with military sims, the training will incorporate high-fidelity imagery and the mechanics of role-playing games.
Earlier this year, Cubic Advanced Learning Solutions was awarded $300 million worth of contracts to provide video game-style training to sailors for the littoral combat ship crews. The company will create one set of courseware for each variant of the ship, as well as a third set of courseware to simulate missions such as anti-submarine, surface warfare and mine countermeasures.
Navy officials believe training in a virtual environment ultimately will be less expensive and more effective.
The virtual courseware will run on Crytek’s CryEngine 3, a commercial video game engine that is the backbone of many popular video game titles.
Read more at http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2013/December/Pages/LCSTrainingStrategyMixesEducationandVideoGames.aspx.
