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?"

Comments

Seen it done - it works

[Bastian]

I'm doing some undergraduate research in computer vision. I looked at using the Quake II and Crystal Space engine, but turned them down in favor of making my own engine (they didn't fit my needs as well as I had hoped). However, I have talked to other people doing research in the same field using game engines, and they have been quite successful.

I'm not sure Quake2 is the best engine, simply because it is very game oriented, but if your requirements allow you to do the coding in QuakeC rather than modifying the engine directly, it would be an excellent option - for one, you get automatic support for any platform that Quake II has been ported to.

If you need to work with the engine at a lower leve, I would suggest giving a free games engine such as Crystal Space a try. Although I think CS is a bit unwieldy to work with, others seem to like it.

Two aspects

[Masem]

The project that the original post refered to as a lacking attempt, I was at UMich as it was being developed (has since moved on to UIC), and their goal there at that time was to try to put ChE into Virtual Reality, to explode a chemical reactor at several difference scales (unit, particle flow, and reaction within the catalyst). They got the layout down well and the various movements well, but as the poster indicated, it was awkward and was meant to be used with the full VR helmet (though you could run it on a standard monitor too). It was interesting but it didn't seem practical as a teaching aid to a large number of students.

In general, using existing gaming engines as a starting point has 2 issues to consider particularly in ChE:

First is the modelling of the plant or whatever you want to see. This is rather easy since most of these engines can give you a realistic design without necessarily a lot of detail, making these engines ideally suited for the purpose (as opposed to starting from scratch with new 3d modelling program).

The other aspect is getting the "actions", specifically the chemical and physical phenomenia, correctly working. Sure, one can create a map file that has a scripted action such that it follows the physical world counterpart exactly, because you've scripted the path that way. Much more interesting, however, is to actually build in physical and chemical models into the map and let the user and other events cause objects to follow these models. For example, it's very easy to model simple chemical reactions via a finite difference forward partial differential equation method in real time, such that one can have the output of a reactor unit change in response to a change that the user makes in the flow concentration, say by using the game engine to interact with an upstream valve, or such. It would take some effort to build that into the BSP map as opposed to modifying the game engine, but it could be done and would give a much wider range of varied situations than having a number of preset input variables with a fixed number of output possibilities.

Now, do consider if a 3d medium is entirely appropriate for such things; in the case of the reactor example above, 3d is probably overkill to some extent, as that could also be handled by a simple Tk/scripted GUI interface or with something like LabView or Excel, even. But the poster's other example of a crstal cell is something that works right in 3d, so is entirely appropriate.

Another thing to consider is that the older engines (Q2, HL, and Unreal) will work much better on the typical computer equipment that universities will have compared to the newer engines of Q3A, UT2003, and Doom3. You should be able to do all the same physical/chemical modelling in these engines, but the amount of detail you can get from the latter ones is probably overkill for a teaching aide. And since most non-first-tier universities are probably working with machines in the 800MHz to 1.5GHz range without fast 3d cards, you'll get very poor performance out of them.

One final consideration is that some modelling might work better in the Quake-like engines, while others better in the Unreal one, mostly due to the difference in how maps are generated. A Q2 engine would NOT be good for a large outdoor area as you'd expect a chemical plant to be situated in, but Unreal should be great for that (though both will struggle if you pack the scene with polygols). On the other hand, Q2 is probably easier to use for enclosed spaces if you have such that you want to model, or if you're focused more on objects as opposed to trying to carve out a room as with Unreal.