To celebrate the upcoming Memorial Day Weekend Gamers Outreach Foundation will host a 24-hour game-a-thon charity with the proceeds going towards entertainment products for troops deployed overseas. Gamers Outreach Foundation has teamed up with The Game Fanatics to offer a cool way for gamers to show appreciation to the military. The Game Fanatics is supporting the Gamers Outreach Foundation’s military division (Fun for Our Troops). Money raised through the fundraiser will go towards a portable gaming kiosk that will be donated to the Dallas Veteran's Affairs Medical Center in Dallas, TX. Gamers can also donate games and consoles to GOF.

The United States Army isn't the only military outfit that has a video game; the Chinese People's Liberation Army has apparently helped develop a similar first-person shooter alongside Chinese game development studio Wuxi Giant Interactive Group.

In development for nearly two years, the military simulation follows the daily grind of a typical CPLA soldier. The scenario takes players through the paces, learning various military tactics and culminates in a large-scale military battle. The game is called Mission of Honor and offers several modes including basic training, solo missions and team-based combat.

We assume the goal of Mission of Honor is similar to that of America's Army: as a recruitment and early training tool for young males in their late teens.

The game will be released soon, though how it will be distributed is still a mystery.

The United States Navy has begun crowd sourcing ideas for fighting Somali pirates using a massively multiplayer game, according to a Fast Company report. Using a new game platform called MMOWGLI (Massive Multiplayer Online WarGame Leveraging the Internet), U.S. military forces and Civilian players on converging on virtual pirates. MMOWGLI is the product of years of research, and will feature 1,000 military and civilian players. It will launch on May 16. The new program is the first effort by the military to integrate both crowd sourcing and gamification into traditional military wargames.

MMOWGLI was developed by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to test the feasibility of using massively multiplayer online games to solve difficult strategic problems like real-world high seas piracy. The MMOWGLI game launching in May focuses on combating Somalian piracy, but the gaming platform is designed to be open enough that it can be adapted to other military hotspots and situations.

The United States Army and the Air Force have officially certified Unity development technology for use on the military's secure networks. This includes the company's game development technology and its Unity Web Player. More importantly, this allows would-be game developers and projects designed to creates serious games and other applications to do so. This also means that software developed for training can now be installed on networks, laptops and mobile devices used in the field.

Microsoft’s Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson) announced via his official blog that military personnel will now have an easier time when conducting commerce on Xbox Live. One of the biggest requests from soldiers serving in the military is to have the ability to use "Military States" as billing addresses. Today Microsoft is allowing just that. As of today Xbox Live now accepts AA (Armed Forces of the Americas), AE (Armed Forces Europe) and AP (Armed Forces Pacific) as options for credit card addresses. To make changes to these addresses, simply makes changes to the billing section on Xbox.com.

"We hope this makes it easier for the men and women in the United States Armed Forces to stay connected to the Xbox LIVE community," said Hryb in the post announcing the new changes.

"Thank you for everything you do," he added.

Indeed, anything that makes it easier for Americans serving our country is a good thing.

Here's an odd study to consider: using a 9 volt battery can make your skills at gaming better - as long as you can stand some small level voltage running through your head. According to an odd DARPA-funded study, running low-level electricity through the scalp might help the mind focus on tasks such as video games. The research used low-level electricity in concert with a military training game to test the theory. Researchers found that test subjects playing a military training game had improved performance when they were affected by transcranial direct-current stimulation (tCDS).

Sponges connected to the temples of subjects generated an electrical current were attached to their temples. Then the test subjects played DARWARS Ambush!, a simulation game designed to help train soldiers for serving in Iraq. The simulation lets players scan for dangers on a landscape, such as improvised explosive devices or enemy gunmen.

The Department of Defense have developed a new simulation technology to help the Navy track enemy submarines and they are testing it by rolling it into a commercial computer game. The Defense Advanced Research Project Arm's Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) software simulates tracking the evasive maneuvers used by submarines. The agency says that the software will soon be rolled into the ACTUV program's computers.

But the real kicker is who will get to test this new technique: simulation game players. DARPA has integrated it into the Dangerous Waters computer game by Sonalysts Combat Simulations and has made the ACTUV Tactics Simulator available online as a free download as well.

American military research and manufacturing company Picatinny Arsenal, has created the Robotic Vehicle Trainer, a "realistic" video game that can be used to train soldiers to operate bomb disposal robots. Picatinny Arsenal has received a patent for "a process to safely train soldiers how to operate a variety of robots used in Iraq and Afghanistan to detonate improvised explosive devices, or IEDs."

The company created Robotic Vehicle Trainer to give soldiers a realistic simulation of IED removal in a combat environments. The game uses the same controls used for the real-world robots used in Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD).

Robotic Vehicle Trainer was created by Bernard Reger, chief of the Combat Support & Munitions Systems Branch under the Armament Research, Development and Engineering Centre (ARDEC).

The U.S. Army has enlisted developer C² to develop seven iPhone apps that teach Patriot missile crews how to launch missiles at targets, according to a report in The Escapist. The developer has completed the first app and delivered it to the army, and is already working on the second. The first app teaches "launch station march orders and emplacement," using a combination of video from real launch crews in action, illustrations, and other visual aids. The app is meant to be used in a classroom with an instructor, according to the report.

Obviously, these apps are not for public consumption. Future apps from C² for the Army will help train missile crews in specific areas (from The Escapist report):

More art inspired by Wikileaks has made its way to the streets. Art that merges still images taken from a leaked video and HUD imagery from Halo 3 has been released as street art in Valencia, California. The unique art went up last week. The imagery is a combination of Halo 3 HUD elements and stills taken from a video leaked by Wikileaks in which U.S. soldiers shoot at civilians from a helicopter. The video shows two Reuter's reporters and unarmed civilians being murdered. The overlay, one would guess, is that the soldiers operating the helicopter were shooting at people as if it was a "video game."

This is the second piece of art from artist "Sandwich," whose first piece showed a picture of Wikileaks front man Julian Assange with the message "If you don't know, now you know."

See it full screen here.

The U.S. Air Force is set to unveil a $2 million super computer comprised primarily of PlayStation 3's on Wednesday. Called its fastest super computer to date, the new system has been codenamed "the Condor Cluster" by the Department of Defense.

Researchers at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio used off-the-shelf PlayStation 3's and traditional graphical processing computer components to create the system. The Condor Cluster will reportedly be used for radar enhancement and recognition capabilities, according to the Air Force.

The Air Force added that the $2 million price tag is about 10 - 20 times cheaper than what it would normally cost to build such a system.

Source: UPI

Canada’s Department of National Defence has submitted a federal government tender request for 500 videogames.

Among the games requested, according to The Star, are 93 copies of Gears of War, 82 copies in total of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and 36 copies of Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. All in all, it’s estimated that the total value of the games sought is around $25,000.

Capt. Sandra Bourne, a spokesperson for the Canadian Forces, said about the order, “It’s a strange one.”

Notably absent from the list—Medal of Honor, which Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay criticized earlier this year.

Wired’s Danger Room columnist recently took a trip to the Association of the U.S. Army conference held in Washington D.C. to get a look at the latest and greatest gadgets that contractors are developing for America’s armed forces.

Among the items was a videogame, dubbed Call of Duty: Afghanistan by Wired, which allows trainees to work on a variety of skills, including maneuvering and leadership tactics.

While Electronic Arts made the adjustment to rename the Taliban to “Opposing Force” in the multiplayer part of Medal of Honor, a ban on the game appearing in GameStop stores located in Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) locations is still in place.

The decision by AAFES officials puzzled a Stars & Striped columnist, who inventoried other violent games available in AAFES locations, such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Grand Theft Auto IV.

While there’s no doubt Electronic Arts totally succumbed to pressure when it removed the Taliban (in name only) from the upcoming Medal of Honor videogame, a letter written to the Colorado Retail Council (CRC) by a former Congressman and ex-Air Force General shows the type of opponents EA was assembling as media hysteria about the game spread.

In a letter dated September 30, just a day before EA announced its change to Medal of Honor, former Colorado Republican Congressman Scott McInnis and Bentley Rayburn (pictured left and right respectively), a retired U.S. Air Force General, affixed their names to a letter urging the CRC to denounce the Medal of Honor game.

As seen on the Colorado Springs Independent website, the pair argued their case to CRC President Christopher Howes, calling the ability to play as the Taliban a “complete disgrace” and adding that “out of respect to our troops no retailer in Colorado should sell it.”

The duo continued:

The Michigan Army National Guard will use a combination of college football and videogames in an attempt to bolster its ranks.

The organization will be at the October 9th University of Michigan versus Michigan State University game in Ann Arbor to recruit new members, armed with a tent and 30 videogames to play, which will be provided by touring game specialist Interactive Game Experience.

Major Lavetta Bennet, in charge of the Michigan Army National Guard’s Recruiting and Retention Battalion, told the Detroit Free Press, “This is one of those creative ways for us to be in conversation with them, especially in a video game age.”

Halo: Reach was listed as among the games that will be used to lure potential recruits to the tent.

GameStop announced today that "out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform we will not carry Medal of Honor in any of our AAFES based stores". AAFES, the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, is responsible for commercial sales on military posts and often includes outside vendors such as GameStop.

Based on the language reported by Kotaku, it appears that the request actually came from AAFES and is simply being honored by GameStop. From the email to GameStop employees earlier today, "GameStop fully supports AAFES in this endeavor and is sensitive to the fact that in multiplayer mode one side will assume the role of Taliban fighter."

All My Children actor J.R. Martinez (pictured) is the new spokesperson for Rehabbing with the Troops, a virtual rehabilitation program that links wounded U.S. military personnel with professional athletes via webcam as they work out using a Nintendo Wii.

Martinez himself is an ex-infantryman who suffered burns to more than 40 percent of his body in 2003 while serving in Iraq. He will work out with wounded warriors from Season One of Rehabbing with the Troops, which kicked off in June and wraps up on August 21 in New Orleans. Members of the Super Bowl champions Saints acted as this year’s pro trainers.

Martinez said about his new role, “This program is so important—it raises awareness of the challenges facing wounded warriors while giving each participant a source of motivation and a goal to work toward.”

Participants in the virtual rehab document their workouts on the Wounded Warrior Arena website. More on what a season consists of:

Miller-McCune went inside the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and came out armed with information on new trainers and simulators helping U.S. troops.

The center is hard at work on fleshing out (get it?) virtual human technology, which the piece’s author states “will most certainly be used in many training and educational roles” in the future. The technology will also inevitably make its way to consumer-based videogames, at least according to ICT’s Bill Swartout, who thinks we will all be talking to our games and “interacting with people who’re talking back” eventually.

One of the ICT’s latest creations is the Mobile Counter-IED Interactive Trainer (MCIT). As shown in the embedded video, the trainer, housed in trailers (hence, mobile) lets users train on both sides of the “game,” both as soldier’s looking to spot IEDs and insurgent’s trying to figure out the best place to plant them.

The U.S. Air Force will continue to ramp up its flight simulation and training capabilities with the addition of up to 20 F-16 Mission Training Centers (MTC) on American, European and Pacific bases.

Each MTC is made up of four high-definition simulators featuring InterSense Inc.’s IS-900 inertial/ultrasonic tracking technology (demonstrated in the embedded video) combined with Link Simulation & Training’s—a division of L3—SimuSphere HD or Advance Helmet Mounted Display (AHMD).

The resulting technology allows F-16 pilots to “detect, identify and engage targets from the same apparent distance as when flying a real mission -- creating an optimum environment for advanced pilot training, tactics validation and mission rehearsal. “

The end result looks something like this.

A high-tech, videogame-laden Army recruiting center in Philadelphia that was often the center of controversy and protests is shutting down at the end of July.

The Army Experience Center cost approximately $12 million to build and was launched in August of 2008. The 14,500 square foot facility, located in the Franklin Mills Mall, was consistently targeted with protests led by a coalition of national peace groups that operated the website Shutdown the Army Experience Center.  The activists felt that the Army Experience Center glorified killing and depicted war as a game with its realistic simulators.

The protest group claimed victory, stating that the Army center was closed at least partly due to its efforts, noting that it had another planned protest in the works for Saturday, June 19.

The U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army have each debuted marketing efforts spearheaded by augmented reality.

The Army’s Race for Strength Challenge—available online, and in kiosk form at select NASCAR events—allows gamers to pilot the Army-sponsored left-hand turn vehicle piloted by Ryan Newman. Online users will be prompted to print out an image of Newman’s Impala (PDF) to utilize as a virtual steering wheel, in conjunction with a webcam, to control the car onscreen. In the race Newman’s car will compete against MRAP and Stryker armored vehicles.

The racing game is said to be “an extension of the U.S. Army's continuing effort to showcase its high-tech skills training and the various options and career opportunities it offers.”

The growing reliance of the U.S. military on high-tech recreations of foreign villages and their inhabitants has some social scientists concerned.

A Boston.com story on the subject begins by outlining the work of University of Pennsylvania engineer Barry Silverman, who has been funded (by an unnamed U.S. agency) to the tune of over $500,000 in order to recreate a 3D computer model of an actual village in Afghanistan. Silverman is supplied with data from U.S. Army social scientists, who interviewed residents of the actual village.

Dubbed “human terrain mapping, it’s hoped that this technology can assist the U.S. in fighting terrorists and insurgents, but the whole idea has Hugh Gusterson, a George Mason University anthropologist, concerned. Gusterson asked, “Are we going to detain someone if a computer predicts that he will become an insurgent?"

He continued:

The Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) was formed in order to provide educational programs to dependents of both U.S. military and civilian DOD workers around the world.

As part of major overhaul of the program’s 60 career and technical offerings, the 2011-2012 school year will see engineering courses offered in robotics, biotechnology, green technologies and gaming design, reports Stars and Stripes. Programs scheduled for discontinuation over the next five years include auto technology welding and lodging management.

The DODEA’s Mark Bignell stated, “We want to try and … give students an opportunity to excel in the future work force rather than get into a niche that isn’t going to have the best opportunities for them.”

While DODEA programs originally centered on vocational offerings, it now is designed to prepare students for college or the military in addition to careers.

The United States Air Force bought 336 PlayStation 3 consoles in 2009 as an initial purchase to create a 53 teraFlop cluster for processing data. Impressed with the power of Sony's home console system, the Air Force decided to buy another 2200 consoles. The whole project cost the Air Force (and by proxy the U.S. tax payers) $663,000.

These PS3 systems were configured with the "Other OS" feature, allowing the Air Force to use Linux to do whatever heavy lifting the project needed, but Sony's recent firmware update that removed that option may prove to be problematic for this work in the future.

The Yokosuka Naval Base in Yokosuka, Japan is the center of operations for the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet and is also now home to a brand new, $6.0 million state-of-the-art “battle lab.”

Set in a formerly abandoned bunker dug into the side of a hill, the facility was launched on Monday according to Stars and Stripes. The inaugural simulation, dubbed Operation Coral Dagger, involved American and Australian forces maneuvering against a fictional foe called the Kamarians, an opposing force used in Australian military training.

The military publication called the exercise “a far more complex game than multinational forces had ever been able to play in Japan before Monday.” The simulator allows multi-national forces from all over the world to participate, whether they are on a ship, sitting in a flight simulator or parked in front of a computer.

The “battle lab” allows training to continue even when ships are docked for maintenance. Japan and other U.S. allies will be able to take part alongside the U.S. in future simulations.

As the U.S. Military continues to implement interactive training as a means to prepare its members for combat, the Future Immersive Training Environment (FITE) team hosted a conference call today in order to discuss a pair of new training initiatives.

Clark Lethin, of the Office of Naval Research, began by noting that FITE’s focus was on training small units, or “squads of 10-13 soldiers, marines, sailors or airmen,” with an emphasis on improving team unity, unit cohesion, unit decision making and communication skills. The first new training initiative, which has been completed, revolves around a personal virtually reality system.

Lethin explained, “An individually worn virtual reality system with helmet-mounted display and a weapon with a toggle switch on it that allows you to locomote through the virtual world… then we have sounds tied into that system, as well as a shock device that will receive shock if these men are hit or wounded by any kind of connectict event.”

It’s not often that a conference features speakers as diverse as Sims creator Will Wright and Joint Forces Command boss General John Mattis, but when the symposium focuses on promoting the use of videogames in the Department of Defense, such an odd pairing makes sense.

Dovetailing nicely with recent news that the U.S. military is planning a larger role for videogames in training, GameTech 2010 takes place in Orlando, Florida from March 29-31 and focuses on “gaming technologies that enhance warfighter training.”

Wright’s keynote subject is Games are Tools for Science and Society, while General Mattis will give a talk on Serving the Training Needs of the Small Unit and Infantry Soldier. An additional keynote from Major General Mel Spiese, USMC Training and Education Command, will discuss The Role of Games in Training Marines.

The U.S. Military, already a big practitioner of videogame-based training for its members, plans to spend even more on the technology in the future.

In a bid to cut battlefield casualties the Pentagon has approved an “unspecified” amount of funding towards research on how to further take advantage of the latest videogame technology reports AFP.

General James Mattis, Commander, U.S. Joint Forces Command, said the initiative would put soldiers through, “as many tactical and ethical challenges as we can before they go into their first firefight.”

He continued, “…I'm convinced, both ethically and casualties-wise, we can reduce the missteps that we are taking on the battlefield, and reduce them significantly.”

As Ubisoft’s recent struggle with DRM technology brings the subject back into the limelight again, the always excellent Ars Technica has an article up exploring how DRM can impact a specific group of gamers—soldiers stationed overseas.

A soldier now stationed in Iraq detailed his experiences with DRM, saying his experiences with the technology have ranged from “annoying to unforgivable,” though he called Valve’s Steam platform “pretty awesome” when it came to working with deployed military personnel in order to ensure that they have access to their games.

The unnamed soldier on his experiences with other companies and services:

I've had hit and miss success with some of the other download companies. Any kind of game that tries to call home, though, is generally more of a problem than it is worth. Especially ones that try to resolve your IP address with your version/purchase location.

On-base Internet connectivity can very spotty and expensive, adding to the headache of playing a game with DRM that phones home constantly. The soldier said that the “government sponsored Internet” features severe bandwidth caps, while civilian Internet is extremely expensive—the soldier pays $150.00 a month for a 192K connection.

Ars added its own thoughts on DRM:

This sort of DRM makes sense for a world where every device is always connected to some magically open and always-on Internet connection. That world is a very long way away, so by requiring an Internet connection at all times to play a game that isn't online itself is simply alienating an audience.