Travel Tips

In the virtual world there is one realm where development has been constant and frenetic ever since the dawn of realistic 3D action on screen - the First Person Shooter or FPS & its close relative, combat strategy gaming. These realms are in turn divided into science fiction and futuristic shooters, some with an RPG (role play) element & those that closely imitate the real world. Personally I have zero interest in horror movies, monsters or science fiction plots involving aliens or mutants!

There are also elaborate strategic simulations of ancient warfare (American Civil War, Napoleonic Wars, Greeks, Romans & fuedal Japanese) but I am an "action & adrenaline junkie" not a history buff or armchair general, so this realm has little interest for me.

I prefer those FPS simulations which attempt to accurately reproduce real-world combat in "modern"wars, both historical, current and future.

None have yet modeled WW1 but there is a glut of FPS sims based on WW2. Impressions of these are inevitably personal & biased by my own tastes, so I should first make clear what my personal criteria are for a "good" infantry combat simulator. Simply well-researched, historically accurate, with extremely realistic weapons, ballistics, sound, locations & ambient weather. I also like being able to drive the vehicles & operate tanks and guns, without any silly rushing about with flags. Ideally the environment should also have physics like those in the real world.

The most realistic simulation of WW2 to date is Red Orchestra - a highly detailed simulation of combat between Russian and German troops between 1941 and 1945 on the Russian Front, including the siege of Stalingard. RO has a steep learning curve & no "trick" effects so you have to have very steady hands & be an excellent shot but the accuracy, sounds & range of the weapons are all realistic. When using a German heavy bipod MG42 machine gun for example, you have to properly deploy it, lying horizontally on the ground before you can fire & if you sustain fire too long, the barrel overheats & the gun jams, yet you can actually change the barrel for a spare. The landscapes and avatars are poorer graphically than many contemporary WW2 FPS sims but the dynamic action and realism remain excellent as all tanks, vehicles & now even field guns, can be driven or operated. A tank crew takes 3 players, driver, hull machine gunner & commander/main gunner. Some of the maps are so big that you can have tank battles at top speed with exchanges of fire over many virtual miles.

http://www.redorchestragame.com/index.php

But ten minutes in this game will soon give you a life-long respect for the generation that fought in WW2 on behalf of our freedoms, including the freedom to meet in virtuality for warfare, yet remain or become friends, regardless of our nationality, age or sex. Neither Hitler nor Stalin would ever have allowed the Internet and the freedom that it envessels and enables.

Gaming now involves budgets, profits & casts as great as those for major holywood movies and has become a major realm of tactical combat training, evaluation, & development in the real military world, where both the US and UK armies increasingly use simulators for training both infantry and tank crews in tactical warfare.

The Electronic Arts "Medal of Honour" series of WW2 infantry combat simulators whose first edition was "Allied Assault" opening with the US landings on the Normandy beaches, was the first I personally tried. I soon became addicted to the unparalleled feeling of "being there" which was new to me. Also MoH (in spite of the title) wasn't just all American infantry - there were Brits in there too and that mattered, as we Brits are all VERY sick of hearing Americans talk as if "they alone won WW2", when in reality we Brits had been fighting alone for three years before they even got involved. When we really desperately needed help in 1940 and were nearly over run, they didn't want to know, but luckily a mere 2000 British Spitfire and Hurricane pilots were able to save us from invasion.

But although I stayed with MoH through its Breakthrough and Spearhead editions, a large percentage of the EA design team, like me, wanted more realism & more action, rather than just going on exploiting the same old formula as the EA Accountants clearly wanted. So they broke away, formed the Infinity Ward company and produced "Call of Duty" a better, faster, slicker and more realistic WW2 FPS infantry combat sim which I and most of the market embraced immediately. Around that time I became increasingly involved socially with other players in a Clan (as they are called) known as "Team X" Several of us were over 50 and preferred ultra-realistic combat so four of us (a serving cop, an ex US marine, myself and a former industrial materials scientist) formed a new clan for mature players called the Grey Guard http://greyguardclan.com/index.php to engage in realistic virtual infantry combat in COD and RO.

COD became the best seller and lasted for three versions, the second of which involved being able to drive tanks and fire field guns too, like the less slick Red Orchestra. COD's final version "Call of Duty 2" was extremely realistic but still really easy to "jump in and play" with zero learning curve. But we all played it so much we got bored yet liked WW2 combat and wanted still more. So Electronic Arts struck back with the best WW2 infantry combat simulator to date - AIRBORNE.

In Airborne you parachute into action in Normandy or Holland with the 82nd or 101st Airborne. You land where you like, on towers, rooftops or between trees, fight in any direction you like and the avatars and weapons are close to photo-real. It is VERY hard to "stay alive" and really adrenalating. As a former parachutist and skydiver who has jumped with the C9 military chutes the Airborne troops used in WW2 I can confirm that the parachuting is VERY realistic in every way. "Vertical" game play adds a whole new dimension to combat too. http://www.ea.com/moh/airborne/index.jsp There is a free demo too so download it and see what I mean.

So what are the limitations of AIRBORNE? Due to the staggeringly lush levels of detail and excellent physics engine, the maps contain so much data that so far they are all too small and there are also too few of them, less than 6 for the multi-player online game, half of them old Medal of Honour Allied Assault maps rehashed so much that they are scarcely recognisable. But its still really amazingly good!

This is an old simulator in a genre known as the "tactical shooter" which came out back in 2002 but I include it here because it was so good that I and 3 American friends played it for several years as a squad. A tactical shooter differes from an FPS in that there are (sometimes complex and sequential) mission objectives that have to be achieved and so it is all about collaboration between soldiers and intelligent tactical planning with few if any fire fights and far more stealth and caution.

Ghost Recon was basically a simple but unusual concept based around an American Special Forces "Ghost Recon" Squad of seven men. In the single player game your squad mates are all (except you) very smart AI driven soldiers. But when the avatar you control is killed, you "become" the next soldier in your squad, and so on, until your seven lives are used up. The challenge is to complete whatever the mission may be, before you run out of lives - i.e. before "all your men are killed". In multi-player and in single player the "enemy" are always very smart AI soldiers (who look just as real as your own men but are controlled by the computer) however although in the online game your only colleagues are your live fellow-players, the challenge remains to complete whatever the mission is with your team before you are all killed. Once you die you can "see" the action through the eyes of the remaining live soldiers, your real online friends.

This created a very very immersive form of game play and great camaraderie because you all HAD to collaborate skilfully and cover each other, to have any chance of achieving the mission and the missions were all HARD. I ended up with 5 CDs of missions - that's how good this game was.

In one case I was the last man left alive in the squad and although it took me 45 minutes of stealth, sniping, tactical flanking, enormous patience and sharp shooting, I finally achieved the mission and assassinated the terrorist leader who was our target. He was in the middle of an armed camp of some 35 men, so this required me to slowly and cunningly take out the 19 remaining enemy guerrillas who were guarding him (after my three colleagues had all been killed) ALONE, in a host of locations, while my buddies "watched" all the action through my eyes! It was totally gripping for us all. The caveat about this one was/is that you can't get rid of that damned gun sight and on screen HUD, so screen shots always remind you that you are in a game and interfere with total immersion. However the landscapes and places "feel very real" and not all combat sims do.

Ghost Recon was my personal "training" simulator, both as a virtual Special Forces soldier and as a sniper which subsequently became my speciality.

Now this is scary. A few years ago, around 2002, showing extraordinary imagination and chilling far-sightedness, the Pentagon saw what was happening in the combat simulation realm with young men and so they commissioned a multi-million dollar ultra-realistic modern infantry combat simulator called Americas Army Online, which they then GIVE AWAY FREE to anyone who wants to download it, as a recruitment, training & propaganda aid to market the US Army! Scary or what?

But this is no "cut price arcade cheapie" - this is a HUGE (1.5 GB) ultra-realistic, top quality, modern infantry combat simulator and you can get it FREE here - http://www.americasarmy.com/ The website is highly professional and the game chillingly realistic and really hard. Any young (or old) man (or woman) "playing" it will not only become intimately familiar with Fort Brag (the US Army recruits basic training camp) but with exactly what will be expected of one there as a recruit. This game is sophisticated "pre-training & pre-selection" and you will soon get a good idea of whether or not a "soldier's life is for you"!

While in this "game" you will learn all the current weapons of the US Army and the principal weapons of their enemies (like the Kalashnikov & RPG), you will learn how to aim, fire and reload all of them. you will also learn what the inside of a Bradley looks like (see the picture) in considerable detail. You will get used to being surrounded by other soldiers with their own skills and styles because online every avatar is animated by a real person remember, so you will also get ribbed (there are live voice comms)and laughed at, if you "suck". You will learn basic stealth, camouflage & simple undercover operations as there are "plain clothes CIA missions". You will also get used to being in a platoon with black, white, yellow and brown faces, as they have built-in the multi-cultural message, and also get used to working alongside the soldiers of host nations with different uniforms and weapons.

Finally you will get teased with lots of propaganda about special forces action to motivate you to get involved in the real thing and impress you with the sheer amount of high tech gear the US Army has for you as a soldier. This is extremely clever and a million miles ahead of the way the UK Army operates, with its out of date radios, jamming weapons, lack of equipment, low morale and refusal to pay adequate medical compensation or deal with training camp bullying and deaths, allegedly that is. Because of course this is all "front end sales" and in the end the US Army will probably rip you off in just the same way although in the USA the press are not encouraged to report that. Remember the US abandoned its Vietnam Vets?

I mean if you aren't computer literate enough to play, can't even handle a GAME and are a lousy shot with slow reflexes, whatever your Rambo fantasies, they won't want you, because you'll die and get others killed too! This way they get to sort the sheep from the goats in advance and save themselves many times the cost of the game and supporting it technically.
The fact that the Pentagon is this smart is either scary or reassuring, depending on your perspective and personal politics.

But AAO isn't the only modern weapons modern combat simulator out there - the best of the current crop IMO is "ARMA Armed Assault". This is based on an earlier franchise called Flashpoint and is Effectively "Flashpoint 2".

ARMA has only been out a few months and they are already about to bring out ARMA 2. These FPS sims satisfy ALL my criteria for immersive realism but have several unique characteristics too. Action takes place on an island but that island is 400 square virtual kilometers, making it the largest "map" in simulated combat gaming history and you can not only drive all the vehicles, but also fly the combat choppers, jet fighters and ground attack aircraft, all of which are far better simulated than in any other infantry mil sim that I have seen to date. The choppers are almost as hard to fly as the real thing and all the weapons are very realistic.

But the best thing of all in ARMA is the ultra-realistic landscape and weather. Every blade of grass moves in the breeze, the flowers have bees, flies buzz, mosquitos whine, leaves in trees rustle and move, feet crunch on gravel, long grass waves and conceals, sniper's "Ghillies" really work as camouflage and if you have Track IR 4 your avatar can nod, shake his head and make silent signals to his squad. Another ultra-neat feature is that when you "die" your viewpoint becomes that of a (controllable) seagull high above the battlefield. If you "fly" the seagull too close to anyone on the battlefield (on either side) they may shoot at you! Respawning (starting a new life) ends your seagull incarnation and returns you to the body of a new soldier avatar. neat.

The best current modern infantry combat simulator of all was published in mid November 2007 and is called CALL OF DUTY 4 - it is the latest in the continuing battle between Infinity Ward and Electronic Arts - except that the COD boys have elected to go for modern weapons combat at last instead of yet more WW2

The result is wonderful news for those of us who love infantry combat simulation as the best WW2 ground combat sim AIRBORNE and the best ever Modern Weapons infantry combat simulator COD 4 - can co-exist without directly competing in the same market while each is the pinnacle of development in its realm. I am profoundly impressed by both of them.

COD 4 has even more realistic environments and avatars than ARMA, by a long way actually.

Look really closely at the screen shot and notice the staggering level of detail right down to fabric textures and the rust on the back of that dead fridge! When that image is full screen as it is in live play you can even read maker's labels and badges on the clothing and the serial numbers on the weapons!

But COD 4 has the same problem as Airborne, as the level of detail and physics in the maps is so high that the maps have to currently remain far too small, less than a square virtual mile generally arther then the 400 square kilometer map of ARMA and ARMA 2. However this is a whole new generation of simulators and hopefully they will all attract the massive level of involvement and additions created by the online "Modding community" (amatuers who build free add-ons for games) and much larger new maps and other MODs will soon get built, as they have for every other successful FPS.

But the realism of everything in COD 4 makes it really stunningly immersive to play - you can check it out yourself as yet again there is a free demo -
http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/call-of-duty-4/call-of-duty-4-demo/533701

Playing the full game in single player is like be IN a dynamic Tom Clancy novel or the Bourne Identity series of movies. The action never stops, the locations are many, the set piece cut scenes linking missions are chillingly real and you always feel adrenelated and stressed. So much so that after 3 or 4 maps online I have to stop, have a cup of tea and a sit down to un-stress!

The online game suffers from the limitation of too few and too small maps - but this will probably change in time, as it always has with every former FPS. But if you want truly convincing immersive realism, this is IT. The avatars you and other players occupy in multi-player and those of the AI enemies in single player that you fight and who fight alongside you are incredibly real and move and act and behave like real people. Working your way from building to building through a middle east urban setting, in blazing street sunlight with pitch dark shadows in buildings, dust, blowing litter, birds and sudden bursts of automatic gun fire, has one's nerves taught as piano wire, then you hear the enemy's gunship chopper coming in low, and you hide, fast, your heart pounding in your ears. If you have a beefy enough weapon (an RPG or a SAW) you can even bring down an enemy chopper, but be sure they don't see you first or you'll die instantly in a storm of chaingun fire and napalm.

COD 4 is GOOD and gets ***** from me!

The US Army in the real world has been developing a whole future infantry system of combined communications, personal equipment and weaponry for the last decade plus, based on the concept of the "one man army". The idea is to make the individual soldier SO powerful that a dozen of these guys are worth a company or two of ordinary soldiers.

The first version was called the "Land Warrior" system and was tested in Desert Storm by US Special Forces. It was heavy, clunky and primitive, with torch sized video cameras instead of gun sights, computers built into battledress with special armour & satellite squad comms.

The second version of this rig in the real world was called the "Scorpion Ensemble" and has been under test by US Special Forces throughout the present Iraq war. It includes even more special body armour, built in teflon knee and elbow pads, micro cameras and a HUD (Head Up Display) visor on the helmet, battle dress that can auto-dispense anesthetics into fresh wounds, form instant splints for bone breaks and transmit exact wound details to the medical team back at base or elsewhere in advance of casualty recovery, plus even more advanced squad comms and a special new light weight combined infantry weapon that does a host of things normally requiring a suite of different guns.

But the very latest current version is called the "Future Warrior System" and has all that the Scorpion Ensemble had but lighter and better, plus electronic chameleon "Predator" style camouflage, built-in UV & night vision and an even better uni-weapon that is a machine gun, a grenade launcher and a sniper rifle, with explosive ammunition and ultra-powerful micro grenades that can take out a tank!

Do I hear you say "So what?"

Well, GRAW 2 (Ghost Recon Advanced Warrior 2) is a very close approximation to this latest "Future Warrior" rig, modeled with great accuracy in an infantry combat simulator game. So, if you want to know what US Special Forces will be using in 1012 just download the free Demo and check it out.

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/tomclancysghostrecon3/download.html?sid=6148358

This is a scarily powerful rig for the individual soldeir and a Special Forces team of a dozen of these guys could take on half a WW2 division of infantry in a fair fight and win. (The US Army has also been developing exo-skeltal strap-on cyber-muscles which enable a soldier to leap over buildings and scale sheer surfaces and an invisibility camouflage for vehicles that renders Bradleys unseeable at 30 yards, so the boundaries between sci-fi and reality are fast becoming increasingly blurred.)

In spite of all the future tech, IMO COD 4 has better graphics, game play and maps. So although I have this one - AIRBORNE AND COD 4 RULE!

The latest modern weapons FPS is called "Soldier of Fortune; Payback" and is as realistic and graphically sumptuous as COD 4 but with such ferociously realistically modeled body damage that it can be as sickening as real warfare, with limbs and even heads being blown off in combat and realistic fountains and puddles of gore. Accordingly this was treated as a "B" game by its publishers and so it may not reach as large a market as it deserves.

As you gather from my coverage of this aspect of the contemporary virtual world - this is my currently my personal favorite realm of simulation. There are several reasons for this. I like above all, the feeling of "being there" which the best of these FPS simulators generate, with their realistic time of day, dynamic live and changing weather, extraordinary realism, convincingly real world physics and sound scapes and the knowledge that every soldier I see online is (controlled by) a real human being who can see me too.

Even though I am now retired and currently (temporarily) relatively unfit, I can still engage in prolonged and repeated competitive virtual combat and undergo vicarious adrenalating experiences in a wide variety of virtual environments and geographic locations.

Above all my motivation is social, as I have little interest in the single-player aspect of any of these games and have actually not completed the SP (single player) aspect of a single one of them so far! (SP even seems a tad sad to me!) This is because online combat is about people for me and I play to enjoy the company of buddies and make new friends and contacts. As a consequence I have met some really fascinating people and now have good friends of all ages, all over the world in several countries. In some cases have even got to know whole families through gaming and we have ended up spending a lot of social time together in the real world too. It's an oddball kind of social networking as you learn things about others in a combat situation that you might never discover in the ordinary world.

The wonderful thing about the internet is that people can play together as complete equals in the same realm, regardless of age, sex, nationality, location, political views, social class, education or fitness as the web is a great leveler and truly democratic in social terms. In it I see the ghostly outline of a growing future universal social demographic global "ultra-nation" with no regard for geographical boundaries - something that we have not even come close to achieving by any other means.

Perhaps you too will meet Lionman in-country, because the Internet, unlike space, is not just virtually infinite but as I am a sniper in virtuality you are unlikely to see me until that single fatal shot rings out.

Now here's a really odd thing that only an experienced "virtual warrior" can tell you - when you are in the virtual world and some distant sniper has you in his scope, sometimes you feel the hackles on the back of your neck bristle (in the real world) and you "feel the scrutiny" a second before the shot that takes you out. Now I can imagine all kinds of quasi-scientific explanations for how that occurs in the real world - but in virtuality??????? You are not even in a real place and "where is" that shared landscape in space?

It isn't "in space" at all, anywhere and you are quite literally in a "shared dream scape", yet you still seem to have survival hyper-senses that operate even there, as an animal . . . . now that is really VERY strange if you think about it . . . . . . . . and those ancient atavistic hunter's senses that you discover naked in a primal landscape in the real world seem, unaccountably, to work equally well in the virtual world. So perhaps we will always remain "top species" in cyberia too.

Accordingly always remember that "although the battlefield may be virtual, the experience is always real".