|
Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
|
|
America's Army And The Last Starfighter
America's Army, the official U.S. Army game, is an online video game that has registered about 4.7 million users. More than 30,000 people log onto the game's servers every day; thousands more play in unofficial leagues. It claims to present the most authentic military experience available, including individual and collective training.
(From America's Army)
When the game begins, it presents the same thrilling words to participants:
Greetings Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier from Xur and the KO-Dan Armada.
No wait - that's the start of the video game in the movie The Last Starfighter, a popular 1984 sci-fi thriller, in which a video game is used to both train and find the best Starfighters - for real. Whenever a player on Earth won the game, he was abducted by Robert Preston - or rather, Centauri - to fight the real bad guys out in the galaxy.
(Robert Preston as Centauri - Galactic Recruiter)
The Army spares no expense in making the game realistic; uniforms, equipment and situations are made as similar to the real thing as possible. The software has a Teen rating; death animations are without gratuitous gore. Special Forces soldiers wear motion capture suits to record urban assault techniques. Game programmers spend time under the targets at a firing range, to make sure that the noise used in the game realistically simulates the "crack" of the miniature sonic boom made by a passing military round.
(Geek live fire exercise)
In the movie, the Last Starfighter video game is placed all around America; wherever kids are bored, they can always play video games. (Historical sidenote: this movie was made before the era of handheld games. If you wanted to play a video game, you had to go to an arcade to play at a large, cabinet-sized machine.) Young Alex, who lives in a trailer park, wins the game and is recruited to join the Starfighters.
(Alex and the other recruits)
In real life, America's Army is as close as your Internet-enabled computer, and most Army recruiters have copies of the game and offices in malls.
"We don't expect that a young person is going to play the game and run out and join the Army," Chris Chambers, retired Army major and project deputy director, said. "That was never the point. We want the game to help us form a more long-term connection with the young person."
(Greetings, starfighter...)
Read more about how
America's Army is made more realistic; visit the
America's Army website. Read more about The Last Starfighter.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 2/17/2005)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.
| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 13 )
Related News Stories -
("
Weapon
")
Has Turkey Been Stealing Rain From Iran?
Can one country take another's rain?
We Need To Build Anti-Drone Systems For Civilian Spaces
'the real border was defended by ...a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats...' - Neal Stephenson, 1995.
Bullet Steers Itself! The Advanced Low-Cost Munitions Ordnance ALaMO
'You've heard of a bullet that has your name on it.' - Michael Crichton, 1985.
Russians Think US Is Weaponizing Asteroids
'BY PUSHING AGAINST THE
LITTLE MARTIAN MOON WITH OUR
ROCKET SHIP, WE HAD LESSENED
THE CENTRIFUGAL SPEED THAT
HELD IT BALANCED IN THE SKY.' - Philip Nowlan and D. Calkins, 1930.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)
is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for
the Invention Category that interests
you, the Glossary, the Invention
Timeline, or see what's New.
|
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Cheap Drunk Driver Detection From UofM
"Look, I can drive... Start, darn it!"
Can A Human Land A SpaceX Rocket On Its Tail?
'If she starts to roll sideways — blooey! The underjets only hold you up when they’re pointing down, you know.'
Robot Snakes No Longer Stopped By Stairs
'...she dropped her hands from the wheel, took the robot snake from his box.'
Has Turkey Been Stealing Rain From Iran?
Can one country take another's rain?
We Need To Build Anti-Drone Systems For Civilian Spaces
'the real border was defended by ...a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats...'
SensorWake Scent-Based Alarm Clock
'The odalarm awoke Jorj X. McKie with a whiff of lemon.'
AI Worms That Spread
'...there were so many worms and counterworms loose in the data-net now'
Challenges Of Two-Armed Robots
When the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.
FlexRAM Liquid Metal RAM And One Particular SF Movie Robot
'Its lines wavered, flowed, and then painfully reformed.'
Ulm Sleep Pods For The Homeless
'The lid lifted and she crawled inside...'
Prophetic Offers Lucid Dreaming Halo With Morpheus-1 AI
''Leads trail away from insertion points on her face and wrist... to a lucid dreamer...'
More Like A Tumblebug Than A Motorcycle
'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized on a single wheel...'
Tesla Camera-Only Vision Predicted In 1930's SF
'By its means, the machine can see.'
First Ever Proof Of Water On Asteroids
'Yes, strangely enough there was still sufficient water beneath the surface of Vesta.'
Aptera Solar EV More Stylish Than Heinlein Steel Tortoise
'When confronted by hills, or rough terrain, it did not stop, but simply slowed until the task demanded equaled its steady power output.'
Gigantic Space Sunshade Would Fight Global Warming
'...the light of the sun had been polarized by two crossed fields so that no radiation could pass.'
More SF in the News Stories
More Beyond Technovelgy science news stories
|
|