OT: Swedish Defense To Use Battlefield 2

[BOP_101TFS 0]

http://www.fpscentral.com/index.php?game=11&site=news&id=7422

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Posted By: residuel Tuesday September 28, 2004 at 1:09 PM EDT

EnLouise has sent us word of a new licensing agreement with Digital Illusions. The Swedish Defense program has made a deal with the developers of the Battlefield 2 technology so they can use it in training programs. Here are all the details:

The Swedish Defense licenses Digital Illusions’ technology

Digital Illusions CE AB (publ) 2004-09-28

Digital Illusions has sold a development license for the Battlefield 2 technology to AerotechTelub. AerotechTelub will use the technology to power simulators used in the Swedish defense training programs. The agreement has an initial value of SEK 4 m.

The Battlefield 2 game is a first-person shooter game taking place on the modern-day battlefield. AerotechTelub is purchasing a development license for the technology powering the game with the intention of developing training simulators and demonstration facilities for the Swedish defense.

- Licensing technical platforms to a third party is a great source of additional income for Digital Illusions, especially as it doesn’t require substantial effort on our part. We chose to license to a party outside the gaming industry in order to maintain our competitive edge in the games area, says Patrick Söderlund, CEO at Digital Illusions.

- The fact that the Swedish defense industry will use technology developed by a Swedish game developer illustrates the strength of Digital Illusions. Developing a similar technical platform would be very costly, and by licensing a commercially developed product we hope to help the Swedish defense in training new talents quicker and thus save money, says Jörn von Treskow, Business Manager at AerotechTelub

The agreement includes a development license worth SEK 4m. The license also includes a minor license support function.

AerotechTelub chose the Battlefield 2 technology because it enables simulation of large geographical areas. It also gives the player the possibility to co-practice different roles in the Swedish defense, and the ability to train for international efforts. The Battlefield 2 engine can also be applied to support the development of new management methods within the military.

The Battlefield 2 game is being developed at the Digital Illusions office in Stockholm and will be launched in spring 2005.

AerotechTelub is part of the SAAB group. For more information, please visit www.aerotechtelub.se.

This sounds like a good deal for Digital Illusions. Hopefully their technology will be able to better the training programs for The Swedish Defense. Keep up all the good work guys!

Source: Dice Website Comments (25)

[BOP_101TFS 0]

Funny replys there ;)

"...LOL, so finland has nothing to fear from west, they would only camp planes at their home base and all their cannon shells would fly over our heads ..."

[cozza 24]

ohh great. Swedish soldiers will now bunny hop around in trining:(

Drill Sergeant: Allright Soldeirs. Jump over to that Truck. Now Double time. I want to see you aleast jump 16 times

[llauma 0]

The engine might be pretty good for the purpose... It would be waste of money to develope a new 3D-engine.

[The Real Armstrong 0]

I'm more afraid the swedish officers will send our soldiers on suicide missions to grab the other sides flag and RTB it.

[GoOB 0]

ohh great. Swedish soldiers will now bunny hop around in trining:(

I doubt one of the most competent defence contractors in Europe will allow bunny hopping

[shinRaiden 0]

~$550,000? That's only about 1000 copies of VBS, and since there is going to be a significant portion of this fee going into development and support, that's a lot less than 1k copies.

Then again, governments are often hampered from standardizing on superior products by laws that restrict bidding to quotas of who or what the developer is, as opposed to the caliber and already-available status or affordability of their product. The only way to get better models than OFP/VBS is to go for the MetaVR type stuff, unless you happen to like bunny-hopping around early 90's vintage cube cars. Oooo, pixel shaders and pretty textures... now we can see you have no polys...

[gandalf the white 0]

They ment Virtual Battlefield systems II ... must've been.... it can't be... -THAT- game...

[the_shadow 0]

actually, it´s SAAB who has bought the game engine for BF, the military hasnt bought anything yet...

SAAB will probably develop a simulator based on the BF engine.. (why else would they buy it?)

[Winters 1]

Obviously they have never heard of VBS1 if they are going to use BF1942.

Denoir, you must get them straightened out on this matter post haste

[GoOB 0]

Obviously they have never heard of VBS1 if they are going to use BF1942.

SAAB will be editing the Battlefield2 engine into a military simulator. It's probably meant as competition for VBS1, and as Shadow said. The Swedish DoD hasn't said that they are going to use this bastard child of a simulator

[Blake 0]

Hopefully it bears no resemblence to the original BF then.

[GoOB 0]

I do wonder why they chose BF2 over developing VBS1 further. Surely the "large geographical areas" of BF2 are smaller than those of OFP/VBS1?

[shinRaiden 0]

I am sitting on the framework for 102km x 102km maps (that's equivelent to 64 of the BIS maps on one map) with the rest of the WRPtool developers until the core engine proxy positioning bug can be resolved, because 102's are unplayable until then. I highly doubt that BF2 is anywhere that ambitious. If you troll the web for screen shots, you'll see that there is not hardly any vegetation on the desert maps. My problem is that I can fit the space for China Lake and the NTC and the area around them onto one map, and still have space left over, and do it today, as soon as I get the DEM files though.

[InqWiper 0]

The BF2 engine might be better at simulation stuff like urban combat which I belive VBS1 isnt good at. Whats wrong with having several simulators for different types of combat

If BF2 is the only engine they are going to use as a simulator then there is probably something good about the engine. It seems like most people are having flashbacks to BF1942 and think thats what the simulator will be like more or less lol.

[joltan 0]

I think VBS is fine at what it does - but in the end it still has the same engine limitations OFP has. The second generation OFP2 engine is still in development - and might be so until late next year or even longer (assuming the spring 2006 release date for OFP2 holds). So I can understand that they want to look into another engine, especially after VBS has already proven how usefull a good infantry sim can be for military training.

Multiple gunner positions (engine supported so performance doesn't suffer), good CQB performance - you can easily trade some terrain size for that if your sole purpose is training.

[CrackerJack 0]

During my time in military there where alot of those bastards that faked an illness or injury to avoid field training, now those bastards gonna play video games instead of just watching tv