Re-purposing commercial entertainment software for military use

Abstract

Virtual environments have achieved widespread use in the military in applications such as theater planning, training, and architectural walkthroughs. These applications are generally expensive and inflexible in design and implementation. Re-purposing these applications to meet the dynamic modeling and simulation needs of the military can be awkward or impossible. Video games are designed to be both technologically advanced and flexible in design. We evaluated current games and modified Quake 3 Arena(Q3A) to serve as both an architectural walkthrough and a primitive team trainer. To accomplish this, we incorporated a real Naval Postgraduate School building into Q3A. We also modified the game's source code, characters and their behaviors, weapons models and characteristics, and overall game play. By re-purposing commercial entertainment software, we have produced a viable military virtual environment application that is less expensive yet arguably as engaging as current computer- based options. This application was created in approximately 300 man-hours with a cost of $6780 (including hardware); far less than the development time and cost of similar military virtual environment applications. Game evaluations included in this thesis facilitate and inform similar modification efforts by highlighting entertainment technology available in the year 2000 game market