1 Year in the Forest: ARMA Combined Operations -- Online Gaming and Flight Simulators.

I have always been into computer games. Even before the days of the internet and home computer software, I had been playing video games since I was about 13 years old. Perhaps I would have started even earlier had the technology been there, but now my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter can open a browser, log on to pbskids.org and navigate to any of the children's program sites and play games on all of them.

Don "Aviator" Welch, Virtual Fighter Pilot

Most of you know by now that I am Active Duty, Military Retired from the US Air Force. Although I wasn't a special operator or combat pilot, I worked closely with these individuals in a training capacity and I continued to work with them as a civilian after my service was completed. I now consider myself a military/historical enthusiast, and although the military get's bad press sometimes in the eyes of the general public, I think our men and women in uniform make great personal sacrifices for the rest of us to maintain our way of life. Not only do I say this because of my own experience in the Air Force, but because everyday I see how many of us take our freedom and way of living for granted.

Online Friends from Canada and the US (Eagle Scout, Hell Gog, Brockert, and Hippo)

When you deploy with US Forces for 20 years, and you work on over 14 different aircraft weapon systems, you gain an appreciation for the mission. For me, online gaming allowed me to relive that mission while forming camaraderie with people from around the world. That's what I like about ARMA II, Combined Operations. In this simulation, you can be a pilot, a tank commander, a sniper, a special forces team leader, or just about anything you want to be. In fact, one of my online friends and I enjoy the logistics side of the game where we build equipment bases and deploy convoys to forward operating locations. It is no wonder that ARMA, or Armed Assault, was developed in the civilian market and was based off of the military training simulation used by the US Army to train its troops on the big picture of theater warfare and logistics.


Rasman Airfield, Takistan -- A foward operating location we developed to launch air operations in the North.

ARMA is the most recent game I've played on a regular basis--others included many variations of the Microsoft Flight Simulator series simulations as well as those ranging from Intelevision console games of the late 1970s to Commodore 64 PC games in the 1980s, to Tank and Aircraft simulators in the 1990s and even to today's highly interactive game environment using large capacity servers and voice over the internet protocol (VOIP) communications. Some of my friends even have devices such as Track IR, something that integrates a virtual head movement tracking device to allow you to turn and look within your environment and transfers the images to your mulit-monitor gaming system.


Game Start Up Screen for Jane's USAF

One of my favorite things about the evolution of combat simulations is the ability to customize your interaction with the software. I started doing this with the Electronic Arts (JANE'S Combat Series) USAF and F/A-18E fighter games. I was able to insert my data and photos into the files needed to show my information online to others during the game. This was considered advanced as many of the people playing these simulations could barely keep up with updates and patches needed to keep their software current.


Jane's USAF - My Pilot Record as Don "JUICE" Welch

As you can see, I mainly focused on being a pilot. But back in the late 1990's, my online friends in the Jane's Combat Simulations world got me to migrate to Ghost Recon by Red Storm Entertainment. Many of these combat simulations replicated real world past and present conflicts involving US and NATO forces in a myriad of environments from arctic to jungle to the desert. I wasn't interested at first, but I soon found the teamwork and communication aspects of this type of gaming to be realistic in comparison to my actual military experience. I specifically remember telling my friends that we would soon be playing video games with multiple combat aspects of gameplay such as ground troop, tank, aircraft, ship, etc, all integrated into one game. Then, soon, the game makers came out with simulations such as Battlefield 1942 and Modern Warfare. Although not totally integrated for full in-vehicle realism, these games allowed players to be pilots, ground forces, tank commanders and more from the same personal computer platform with their buddies around the world. But this would be only the beginning of what ARMA would become, and we wouldn't get there for a little while longer.

Lock-On, Modern Air Combat Startup Splash Screen


F-15C Afterburner Takeoff into the Sunset on Lock-On

About the time I was considering taking my first break from Online Gaming, my Ghost Recon buddies were migrating over to Lock-On, Modern Air Combat. I entered a hiatus from gaming for about five years from 2004 until 2009. During this time, I completed a Bachelor's Degree in Aeronautics and a Private Pilot Certificate, not to mention deploying to Saudi Arabia for three months and eventually completing a 20-year career in the "Force." But, for the small sum of $1, I bought Lock-On on eBay and played alone (not online) for a few months. By the time I got the simulation, almost everyone had moved on to Falcon 4.0, one of the most realistic F-16 simulations ever. I worked on F-16s in Korea in 1992-1993, and this game can actually train you to start the engines and operate the F-16 Viper. I did find a group of enthusiast in Europe that had moved to Lock-On, Flaming Cliffs, but I didn't feel the cost of the additional software was worth it. So through the encouragement of a friend, I got into Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2.


Screenshot from Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2

My buddy, Jesse Milich asked me if I'd like to help him finish some challenges on Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2, and I was looking at something to reconnect me with online gaming. Jesse was a Marine who served about 6 years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They say, "Once a Marine, Always a Marine!" For Jesse and I, Modern Warfare projected us into our respective roles with him as a ground pounding jarhead and me as an airborne airman over the battlefield. We of course swapped positions all the time to see if we could beat the average times set by other gamers and the software developers. But soon, Jesse and I moved to Battlefield, Bad Company 2, and the game interaction and multiplatform options took us to a new level and we never went back to Modern Warfare.


Battlefield, Bad Company 2 Score Card

Battlefield, Bad Company 2 was a huge leap forward for me. For the first time, I was able to game with players all over the planet in aircraft, tanks, and jeeps as well as ground forces. And we had the added benefit of a rank system with rewards and weapons unlocks. Jesse was busy with work, but I quickly accelerated to unlock all the weapons and reached level 50 in about seven months time. Almost all of the games had stand-alone campaign games you could do offline and Modern Warfare 2 even had offline 2-player cooperative games, but Bad Company 2 had a decent singleplayer mode as well as an excellent multiplayer theme. I basically developed a new set of friends through this game and we eventually joined a clan (online military unit) and moved to ARMA II Combined Operations while using TeamSpeak as our communications platform.

ATACAMA Desert Map - Conquest Mode

The the neat thing about Battlefield, Bad Company 2 online gameplay was that it offered multiple styles of gaming from Conquest to Rush modes and many updated theaters of operation. Unfortunately, like Modern Warfare 2, the games were only offered through designated public servers and players had no control in adapting missions or hosting custom games on private servers. If you wanted to host a game, you had to purchase space for a dedicated server to run your own clan game. But enter the world of ARMA!

ARMA Combine Ops Screenshot - USS Kae Sanh at night.

ARMA brings back all the custom abilities of old-style, online gaming as far as modification of missions and equipment, to hosting your own online games either on a server or from your capable home computer. I often hosted ARMA games for up to 8 players with friends, passworded games only. Some of best times of my adult life have been doing virtual special operations with my online buddies. The graphic environment and gameplay is so real, even surreal, that you sometimes forget that it's just a game. But even this level of involvement, and the hundreds of hours spent on gaming, can be considered an addiction. I do know that online gaming feeds my ADD needs and helps me get my multiple input needs while also allowing me to relax and focus on a narrow task at the same time. I liken the focus during gaming to that of yoga or meditation, especially when I am only doing touch-and-go landings in an F-16 fighter. But still, it can be very addicting.

F-16C Afterburner Takeoff at Sunset - Rasman Airfield, Takistan.

F-16C Taxi at Rasman.

Splash 1 - F-16C shooting down an L-39 Albatross.

As I mentioned before, Falcon 4.0 was probably the most realistic flight sim for the F-16 that I've ever played, but others have had better landing and flight characteristics and not any single game has had all the realistic aspects plugged into one...but ARMA comes close. It will be interesting to see what ARMA III offers next year in the essence of advancement. At this point, it's hard to improve upon gameplay unless you get a full-motion, panographic flight simulator like the professional airlines use. I've flown in those commercial and military simulators where you have pollution and 270-degree field of vision, but nothing compares to the real thing. I have almost 300 hours in real airplanes, but I will never be able to fly and shoot down a bandit or blow up a terrorist vehicle in real life. Not unless they develop Somalia Pirate intervention forces, I am destine to be a virtual pilot, second to being a husband and father to my family. They will always come first!

That's all for now, keep in touch and email me (See my Blog header for my email address) to provide feedback on my blog. If you haven't already, sign up to follow as I'll be continuing "1 Year in the Forest" beyond 2011 as I find something else to give up for a year in order to make life better.

Cheers,

Don "Aviator" or "Juice" Welch