Norway Is Gamifying Warfare By Driving Tanks With Oculus Rift

Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes "Look at Norway, where the Army has started using Oculus Rift to drive tanks with increased visibility, according to the Norwegian TV station tu.no. Four VR cameras are mounted on the sides of the tank to give the soldier inside donning the headset a full 360 degree view of what's going on outside, like X-ray vision. Using cameras to 'see through' a vehicle isn't a new concept; when the hatches are down tanks are notoriously hard to navigate. But the Oculus Rift dev kit is just a fraction of the price of traditional 360-degree camera equipment: Lockheed Martin's F-35 helmet for pilots can cost tens of thousands of dollars."

Re:F-35

[binarylarry]

Yeah it's like "My bike helmet looks like something astronauts wear and it protects my head! Why isn't NASA buying these instead of those expensive space helments?"

Can we just kill that word?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Gamify" is such an ugly neologism, even in the situations it was coined to cover (ie. the ones where a non-game task is dressed up in game-style features by some means), that it really should be taken out and shot. In this case, they aren't even 'gamifying'. They're just experimenting with COTS gear as a, presumably cheaper, presentation system for the stitched-together output of the exterior cameras. That doesn't make the situation somehow more game-like.

Re:F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

There's that, and the F-35 helmets do far more than just a visual display. They're engineered to keep the pilot's noggin safe(OR is not), they keep the pilot oxygenated in high G turns(OR does not), and it's highly integrated with the F35's avionics(OR is not).

There are good reasons a pilot's helmet costs more than a thousand $$$.

Re:F-35

[Savage-Rabbit]

Maybe the F35 flies faster than a tank and needs a stricter latency.

With sufficient thrust, the tank flies just fine

A flying tank has been built and tested already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org] ... but even the crazy Russians only tried that once. Nowadays they are paradropping BMD APCs with the crew on board... any volunteers?

Re:Externally mounted cameras

[jythie]

Not that much different then usual. A couple of paint bombs can cover up view ports just as easily.

TU != TV Station

[Anonymous Coward]

TU or Teknisk Ukeblad is litterly Technical Week Magazine, a 150+ year old magazine owned by three engineer unions and distributed to their members and other subscribers. As most news outlets, they have a web page with a video section with video extending their written articles. They are not a TV Station.