Further proof that the world is turning into a videogame: Raytheon is designing guidance systems for drone aircraft using videogame developers. The goal is to produce controls that mimic the look and the feel of videogames, that way gamers can basically control real military equipment with little training.
Existing drones are controlled through keyboard input and are, by most accounts, clunky and hard to control--if they were reviewed on X-Play, they'd get one star, perhaps. But the new unmanned planes are better: "We took the best-of-breed technologies from the gaming industry and coupled them" with military needs, a Raytheon executive told Slate. The result is described as "a user-friendly array of throttles, switches, and thumb controls. It's based on an Xbox processor and looks like a PlayStation." It incorporates wrap-around screens and is apparently intuitive and easy to use. Check it out in the picture above!
For an operator half a world a away, slamming a missile into a specific building will "feel" like playing a game. Of course, if you're in the building, it probably won't feel like a game at all...
Slate.com: War Is Halo
