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Unity signs “multi-million dollar” contract to help U.S. government with defense
- seydor 4y agoNo crisis go to waste
- bannedbybros 4y ago[dead]
- JakeAl 4y agoThey use Unity for a wide variety of purposes, including cyber-security and educational training in general. BE glad they are making jobs available for the thousands of kids graduating with Unity certification in an oversaturated game market. There's a huge demand for "Unity Engineers" (read: actual programmers who also know how to use a GUI/IDE like Unity).
- wyre 4y ago> BE glad they are making jobs available for the thousands of kids graduating In the same way that I should be glad that the military takes advantage of poor kids and sends them to war by giving them college tuition? No thanks.
- hammyhavoc 4y agoMe: Give me Godot or give me death. Unity: allow me.
- spandrew 4y agoSeems fine? I don't see the need here for additional litigation. We all mostly hate war. US Military isn't going away, nor are Russia or China as global power brokers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Getting upset over this is akin to yelling at Xerox for selling their machines to the IRS because you got audited. Or because counterfeit currency can be produced. It's just a tool doing its (neutral) job. So long as we want our society to invent progressive tech this is the exhaust of it; people you don't like might use the tech.
- water-your-self 4y agoJust because its happening doesnt mean we should passively contribute.
- berry_sortoro 4y ago
- grenoire 4y agoOver the last month, we've been hearing more about Unity's business developments than its work on the core product itself.
- 8note 4y agoIs there anything still to build for unity's core product? Seem like it is everything that it needs to
- verytrivial 4y agoCEO making the super-yacht dash perhaps.
- kranke155 4y agoAfaik the product is going nowhere. Someone here said that he suspects the code base is loaded with unsustainable technical debt that they are no longer able to solve and…
- antiverse 4y agoI'm surprised this is coming to light now. I evaluated their tech early on, and it struck me right away at how poorly thought out some decisions were. Very basic things, too. One distinct issue I remember is not having any sort of an "Application" object or app-state pipeline interface/object that I can place my non-component logic into, stuff like checking various timers, handling app-level event hooks, and so on. Turns out, people attach this sort of logic to the Camera component. How the fuck did you get to that point without thinking about any of this?
- KronisLV 4y ago> Unity has signed a lucrative contract with enterprise technology firm CACI that will see it become the "preferred real-time 3D platform" for future systems design and simulation programs across the U.S. government. I know that some might dislike this on ethical grounds, but then again, I guess I couldn't really be opposed to something like Blender being used for 3D modelling for all sorts of domains, so my views of Unity shouldn't be that different, either. From a business perspective, that's just securing a lucrative deal for a high profile client. That said, Unity still is one of the better options for 3D gamedev beginners: good workflows for assets and level design, lots of plugins and assets that are available, great platform support, good scripting with C# (performant enough AND reasonably easy to use), one of the best amounts of tutorials and guides available. Of course, the downsides are the instability of... pretty much everything in the last few years: the editor getting slower with each release and especially for large projects, VCS support with Git/LFS can be sub-optimal, URP/HDRP/legacy render pipeline split and problems with assets, DOTS being incomplete, multiple UI/input systems, new package management functionality and problems opening/upgrading 2-4 year old example projects, networking being deprecated and even the organization itself being a bit controversial. If I wanted to make a game to sell without being skilled enough to grok Unreal, I'd probably still go for Unity. But personal projects? Godot. The open source nature allows me to dodge all of the above, even if something as basic as terrain support must come in the form of a 3rd party plugin in Godot and I probably wouldn't ship anything good anyways (at least until Godot 4 is stable with better 3D support and 5-10 years pass and there are enough assets to use as a crutch). Regardless, it seems to have reached enough of a critical mass to remain a viable option even in the future and get more love than something like Xenko/Stride (which I've mentioned before), or jMonkeyEngine (although that is lower level) and avoid situations like happened with Machinery altogether. Back to Unity, though, I hope they stop implementing half baked functionality and spend 2-5 years fixing everything and working on consistency and stability instead. Which probably won't happen, much like in enterprise software rarely you get months/years to address all of the technical debt, but rather mostly keep implementing new features for direct business value.
- colechristensen 4y agoA “multimillion” defense contract is about the bottom of the barrel for small defense contracts. Like maybe one or two programs with a few dozen people working on them for a year or two.
- mschuster91 4y agoSure, the big thing with any government contracts is that you have a way better chance of getting "in" if you already have prior experience with government work. That's a large part of why it's usually the same cluster of three to six large companies winning an utter majority of public tenders - smaller but better (i.e. not optimized to milk government contracts for every cent) shops don't stand a chance against someone who has been in business with government for decades. The more contracts you have on your belt working directly or as a subcontractor, the better your chances.
- JackFr 4y agoAnd if you’re a small shop who is the incumbent on a small to medium size contract through a couple of bidding cycles, if one of the big boys wants that contract badly they’ll acquire you. Much easier than winning the bud and makes everyone happy.
- ThePadawan 4y agoIt is my entire hope that "multimillion defense contract" boils down to: - People in suits give presentations for each other for 6 months - The budget is used up
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- relyks 4y agoThe department of defense has been using Unity for a long time. As someone who worked at the U.S. Army using Unity, when I was there awhile ago, Unity was used for developing simulations to train groups of soldiers to use different kinds equipment and to understand battle scenarios. I did work for a trainer that taught people how to use an M777 Howitzer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M777_howitzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M777_howitzer). I get the ethical concerns Unity employees have had, but can't any development environment be potentially used for ethically gray purposes? Personally, I didn't see myself as directly sponsoring war, especially since all American taxpayers are contributing towards the defense budget. I saw my work as being part of an ecosystem that could help save soldiers' lives. Soldiers will need to go fight either way for defensive purposes and they need to be trained. If the training process can be more effective and efficient by using game-like simulations, why shouldn't it be? The simulations also end up saving a lot of money, because it's not necessary to waste gas or ammunition taking a tank or a heavy artillery piece out for demonstration use.
- balentio 4y ago
- meheleventyone 4y agoUsing Unity is different from Unity the company directly working with defense contracts. I can see people taking moral issue with that and not everyone working at Unity is a US citizen and even if you are you don't get a choice in how your taxes are used. Whereas this agreement is voluntary support. From a user perspective it's also at odds with the public image from the history of the company even if it's been a historically good platform for other companies to develop defense simulations and training tools with.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago> I saw my work as being part of an ecosystem that could help save soldiers' lives. Exactly. You worked on a training environment for the M777 howitzer. Better training means less chance that they hit the nearby friendly unit or civilians. If they can deliver accurate fire more quickly under pressure that means less time for the enemy to kill friendlies as well. Better trained soldiers is a win for all parties that are not the enemy.
- AreYouSirius 4y ago
- cryptica 4y agoI find these government contracts completely immoral. The government could easily hire skilled people directly for a fraction of the price. These are always really just about lining the pockets of execs.
- 8note 4y agoIn this case, using unity as an already existing system that has all the useful support is likely cheaper. There's a huge amount of investment to make a game engine, and while public alternatives to everything is great, it's not necessarily cheaper than using already-existing solutions.
- KineticLensman 4y agoJust to expand on '3D' a bit. The application here is likely battlefield simulation rather than content creation as with Blender. The simulation could be in novel areas where exiting sims don't have pre-existing libraries of assets (e.g. meshes, textures and behaviours for military platforms) and / or to allow access to third party products that are integrated with Unity, e.g. AR/VR headsets. For traditional battlefield sim, Unity has hard competition from systems such as VBS that have extensive asset libraries and multiple training solutions delivered to western militaries over the last decade or so.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lizardactivist 4y agoI associate the US flavor of "defense" with war, murder and racket more than actual defense or anything ethical. Who can blame me after seeing what they have done in the Middle East for the last 20 years? It's a shame to see Unity supporting something like this just to increase their revenue.
- thehappypm 4y agoWell, when was the last time America was attacked?
- jmartrican 4y agoYou know without the US the Middle East might be in full blown war. The US defense might just be a stabilizing force. Just think about how much war deaths have reduced since becoming a super power. War used to be the default state of existence for much of the world. And even now the US defense is defending Ukraine, and defending democracies around the world.
- bannedbybros 4y ago
- frobishercresc 4y agoThe US and the west seeded all these conflicts after WW2 when they arbritrarily divided up ex-Ottoman Empire land with no real interest in Japan or Germany esque Marshall Plan or establishing democracy. The US funded the Mujahadeen (now the Taliban) to remove the Soviet aligned government The US supported the Shah in Iran as an absolute monarch until a popular revolution removed him The US funded Iraq to fight the newly formed republic of Iran, partly since Iran wanted to keep the oil for themselves The US invaded Afghanistan to remove the extremists they propped up in the first place and spend trillions in taxpayer money to enrich US contractors The US invaded Iraq later on because of their oil US indiscriminately funded 'rebel' forces in Syria and Iraq, knowing many of them were extremists and would cause chaos in the region. The US props up the Israeli state with funding and weapons, where they impose rule over Palestine despite the fact Israel do not allow them vote in Israeli elections The US is currently stealing oil from Syrian oil-fields The US is pumping weapons into Ukraine only to weaken Russia and force Ukraine into a deeply submissive vassal position where they owe the US hundreds of billions and must act only in the US's interests. Does this sound like a military-industrial complex that is interested in peace or just in making money from chaos?
- cpursley 4y agoShouldn't "defense" be in air-quotes?
- AndrewVos 4y agoHah was literally thinking the same thing. "Department of wholesale torture and murder of innocent civilians" doesn't have the same ring to it though does it?
- fiat_fandango 4y agoAre they building the domestic IRS combat breaching simulator yet?
- sylware 4y agook, out-of-the-box glibc/linux dev support... but for defence... no source code? mmmmh....
- rejor121 4y agoIn my humble opinion, I feel like many commenters here aren’t veterans or don’t understand how thin the line is between a stable and unstable world. Or simply don’t care to look deeper at why the USA military does what it does, along with the different three letter agencies. Yeah, a lot of mistakes have been made. Many of them will continue to be made. The hope is that we still leave the world better off than it was before. Inaction can lead to just as bad a result, if not worse, than taking an educated action at all. It’s simple to sit there behind the desk reading articles and history when you’re not one making the decisions, good or bad.
- glenda 4y agoMilitary violence can make the world more unstable too. Especially when many civilians are killed. There is no way to actually determine if military action taken by the US has been a net positive for the world.
- buscoquadnary 4y agoThere are a lot of Jews that exist today because of US military action that would like to weigh in on the net positive impact of the US military actions, as well as several million Koreans that don't have to live in "best Korea" to are pretty supportive of it.
- glenda 4y agoAnd in the years since we have killed millions of people in Vietnam and hundreds of thousands in the Middle East and we’re currently bankrolling what many people consider to be a genocide in Palestine. There have been several successful actions, but we’re talking about the net impact not specific instances.
- 8note 4y agoSaid Jews were previously New Yorkers, and would also be fine in New York too. Theres a lot of Palestinians subjected to war crimes that aren't very excited about the same US military action