Who says that video games are child’s play? Adults, too, enjoy their fair share of Mario. Well, boys in the military who grew up playing video games might have something else to cheer about when it comes to the latest gizmos and gadgets – we’re talking about the once humble video game controller helping our men in uniform operate real-life weapons against flesh-and-blood adversaries. That’s right, it is extremely hard to tell military-grade game controllers from their civilian counterparts at the moment, as these will enable soldiers to operate cameras, fly unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and even fire remote-controlled machine guns. After all, why introduce something that is not familiar to the military – in short, don’t reinvent the wheel when there is no need to.
I am not sure whether the martial version of the civilian gaming controller will result in a classic case of the PlayStation thumb – where it gets all blistered, but I guess military operations aren’t that frantic via a controller, as it will most probably require far less button mashing. One thing’s for sure – I don’t think that we will see Wiimote-like controls in the future – or will we? This is one part that I hope to be wrong, as it would be really cool to see someone wave their hands to drop bombs from an UAV.
These military grade controllers will cost thousands of dollars, although the data transmission format still relies on the humble USB port.
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