Bradley Trainer: Atari’s Military Project

By the time I used BFV simulators in 1989, they were more advanced: The driver and gunner had independent screens and controls, and the wireframes were shaded. Still, I remember thinking at the time that it felt similar to my misspent youth in arcades playing Battlezone. Wouldn't be surprised at all if there was a direct lineage.

I was a Bradley gunner for three years about ten years ago as an infantryman in the US Army. We trained on systems that were completely immersive virtual reality rooms which were built just like the inside of a BFV. They were pretty realistic, but of course nothing prepares you for live-firing in combat. Of all the things the Army does, the training is one of the things that doesn't suck.

These trainers served as inspiration [1] for "Armada" [2]. It's along the lines of "The Last Starfighter" (which in turn draws inspiration from the Excalibur legend).

[1] http://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2015-07-31/ernie-cline-g...

[2] by Ernest Cline, of "Ready Player One" and "Fanboys" fame.

In my early consulting days I got sent to an ex-Atari execs home and was told this exact story, although he said the final call was to just "give the whole thing away to the army" since internally Atari was so strongly against the endeavor on a political level.

Besides he said, "they could just have just taken it from us anyway".

I don't know if that was a comment on their contract terms or what but it was clearly an uncomfortable arrangement for Atari.

I always find it fascinating looking at these old "simulators" compared to modern ones, and have to wonder about the utility of them.

I guess people will say that in the future they will look at simulators like Virtual Battlespace (the military training version of ARMA) and wonder how anyone found them useful, when now you can get full VR and omnidirectional treadmills.

I guess it's all about what you're training for. I've played around on a very expensive (to the tune of 6 figures) static C-130 Hercules simulator. The point of the simulator wasn't to simulate rolling etc though, it was to simulate processes, so all the switches and panels were in the exact location that they were meant to be.

Making a good tank simulator is surprisingly hard; you need to model constantly changing terrain and gradient and their interaction with the tracks. Flight simulators are much easier. That may be why it was only designed for the gunner not the driver too.

Years ago I worked at FMC. I remember being told that Atari had designed a game based on the M113/Bradley. I was also told that it didn't work well - and the tank drivers found it to be unrealistic - so they didn't use it. (Well, they actually used stronger words than that about how the game wasn't realistic.) I don't have any real first-hand knowledge. That is just what I was told.

Sadly, the Bradley trainer doesn't actually work properly in MAME, because the mathbox (a math accelerator circuit) in the Bradley Trainer used custom PROMs which differ from the stock Battlezone (implementing several more commands than 'stock' Battlezone does), and these were never dumped by Scott Evans.

Hence the "AI" (and collision detection?) doesn't work correctly.

someone who is interested should just file a foia about the trainer, it's likely declassified by now.