SIMNET

military’s SIMNET system of networked training simulators, BattleTech centres put players in individual “pods,” essentially cockpits that served as immersive, interactive consoles for both narrative and competitive game experiences. All the vehicles represented in the game were controlled by other players, each in his own pod…

…this era was the DARPA-funded SIMulator NETworking (SIMNET) project, begun in 1983 under the direction of Jack Thorpe. SIMNET was a network of simulators (armoured vehicles and helicopters, initially) that were linked together for collective training. It differed from previous stand-alone simulator systems in two important respects. First, because the…