Simulating Fallujah

Graphics engines, supercomputers and real gunpowder.

By Dan Verton

January 31, 2005 12:00 PM ET

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Computerworld - When U.S. Marine Corps and Army units launched their assault on Nov. 8 against insurgents in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, the world learned what military historians have known for centuries: Urban conflict is among the most dangerous and deadly forms of warfare.
The enemy can be anywhere -- behind any door or any window, on any rooftop or around any corner. It's the uncertainty and the 360-degree nature of the urban battle that not only makes it a dangerous and deadly endeavor, but also one of the most stressful of military operations.
That raises the question: How do you create a training environment that replicates the stress and uncertainty of such operations? The answer: Take cutting-edge IT systems and graphics engines and integrate them with traditional explosives and fireworks, and you have a self-contained, fully automated and safe urban-warfare training simulation, complete with the sights and sounds of real car bombs, mortar attacks and snipers.
The military is beginning to use the techniques and technologies that the entertainment industry has already perfected, says retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Lee Downer. Now a consultant at Gestalt LLC in King of Prussia, Pa., Downer was the senior U.S. Air Force officer responsible for air combat training and managed the service's effort to Web-enable cockpit simulators across the country.
"That made fighter pilots really feel like they were in war," says Downer. "They probably get harder work in the simulator than when they go into combat. The idea now is to translate that capability to the ground forces."


The enemy can be anywhere—U.S. Army soldiers prepare to enter a building in Fallujah, Iraq, during Operation al Fajr (New Dawn) on Nov. 9, 2004. Image Credit: Sgt. 1st Class Johancharles Van Boers, U.S. Army

Advances in graphics engines and supercomputers promise to fundamentally transform military training. "In the last few years, PC graphics cards have advanced to capabilities beyond expensive simulation engines," says Paul Debevec, a filmmaker at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies, a research center in Marina del Rey.
Programmers are only beginning to take advantage of their capabilities, he adds. "In particular, the cards now allow for arbitrary floating-point calculations to be performed at each pixel and vertex of a model, and the frame buffers have sufficient bit depth to represent the full range of light seen in the real world, from deep shadows to blinding sun," he explains. "We will soon see real-time 3-D models where light reflects off of surfaces in the same complex ways that it

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