Truman turns into virtual playground for navy crews.

• Author: Jean, Grace
• Position: WARGAMING

The Navy is investigating whether a video game that replicates operations aboard an aircraft carrier can help train ship and aviation crews.

Modeled upon flight deck operations on the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, "24Blue," was developed by the Hunt Valley, Md.-based gaming company, BreakAway, Ltd., in conjunction with the Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training.

The objective of the game is to launch a sequence of fixed-wing aircraft--including the F-18 Hornet, the EA-6B Prowler and the S-3B Viking--off the carrier quickly, before it is attacked, says Mike McShaffry, head of the company's Austin, Texas, studio.

"If you don't run it in 40 minutes, the Sparrow missiles and the [close-in weapon system] cannons fire off on the carrier, and you have a failure case, because you didn't do your job fast enough," he says.

To give the game as much fidelity as possible, the Navy's Education and Training Command flew McShaffry and three of the game's development team out to the USS Truman for a first-hand look at how crews handle flight deck operations.

The experience was illuminating and educational, says McShaffry, and allowed the team to design realistic scenarios.

"For example, the Viking can't fold its wings down on the fourth catapult while the jet-blast deflector shield on the third is up, because they would actually collide," he says.

Maneuvering aircraft without running into anything else or off the deck and burning fellow crewmembers with jetwash were only some of the other hazards he and his team learned.

"All these dangers, these things can happen to crewmembers and air craft on the real flight deck. So we tried to model that as realistically as we possibly could," says McShaffry.

At the Serious Games Summit in Arlington, Va., McShaffry gave National Defense a demonstration of the PC-based simulation prototype. Using a standard game-controller, players can select various hand signals that allow the flight deck character to direct aircraft. The simulation looks and plays much like any commercial first-person action game. It is designed to prompt players on their next objective, such as whether to launch a particular aircraft or to move it to a different location on deck so that another one may pass.

"A lot of people that are signing up to join the Navy are kids who understand video game technology. And so they expect a very high degree of fidelity and interactivity," says McShaffry.

The simulations game engine, Gamebryo, is...