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Quake II Mods for Engineering Students
gleeklet writes "Has anyone else seen that there is a need for inexpensive 3D visualization software for presentations and classroom lectures? There is a Chemical Engineering package available but compared to video game software, the graphics are a bit lacking. My goal was to create a chemical plant with the process control algorithms coded into the Quake II source. As a short demo I spent several hours creating a unit cell demo Quake II level to demonstrate the use of open source video game technology, which I found was well received by undergrads. Has anyone used video game technology as an education tool for science or engineering?"
The Quake II engine is open sourced, thus making whatever modifications necessary much easier. Unreal Tournament 2003 isn't, and probably will never be.
Look on the specs of the upcoming Doom3 engine. The physics there have reverse kinematics and many nice stuff. Their collision detection is so good that when you fire a weapon, the bolt is simply a triangular object, moving at a very high velocity. Because the system is so accurate, when it hits objects, they move as expected.
Ofcourse, the game is not out yet. But when it'll be out, there will be modders out there to use this and as we know iD, they will release their source code in a couple of years.
^_^
Whilst not a science or even in the opinions of some people a real educational subject, there was some discusion a while back about Dance-Dance Revolution being used in Gym classes to encourage Co-Ordination and exercise.
Read Errant Story.
The main reason for choosing Quake 2 was the GPL'd source code. I would like to add code to model reaction rate kinetics, flow rates, phase equilibria, etc. With a proprietary game like Unreal or even the Quake III engine, this is not possible without licensing the software, which is big bucks. Chemical Engineering teaching labs are expensive to build and maintain, and as students, a trip to the plant is strictly look and don't touch for obvious reasons. Adding the danger of getting killed by falling on a turning motor shaft, or by opening the wrong valve and causing an explosion could provide valuable and cheap safety lessons as well. The real benefit from a plantwide process control perspective is to allow a disruption in a control variable like a feed rate, pressure or temperature to propagate through the system and then let the students "tune the controller" to help fix the problem. This is currently learned using Matlab, Simulink, or MS Excel. I had envisioned entering process control adjustments in the console in Quake 2, trading the weapons for tools such as a wrench, pressure tester, thermometer, flow meter and even a laser pointer for multi-player presentations and making the act of learning real world troubleshooting more realistic.