Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Playing to win (02 Dec 2004) The opposite extreme is exemplified by OneSaf, a large-scale simulation being developed by the army in Orlando, Florida. The goal of OneSaf is extremely ambitious: to simulate the entire army. Unlike “Warrior” and “Command”, it is not meant to be used as a training tool to hone soldiers' instincts, but by planners and, in the long run, even front-line troops, to see what would happen in a given situation. OneSaf is an enormously complicated software framework which is expected to take years to develop. It will surely not be a perfect recreation of the world. But it illustrates the power of technology to be transformative in a way that “Warrior” and “Command” are not—since they are not as good as training exercises in the field, but merely a cheaper alternative. OneSaf, if it works, will allow commanders to see in a virtual world the effects of new tactics or hardware—a fundamentally new capability. Rather than merely recreating the world, in short, elaborate simulations might someday be powerful enough to change it. Article URL: http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3422957 Read 58 more articles from Economist sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Your cheating phone     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy