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

A wonderful idea

[cybergeak]

making a map of something for a quake engine is a much better idea for a walk through than say QuickTime VR, and the guns and HUD are easily removed, so having a BFG while touring a possible building design isn't that big of a worry.

wasnt there a post here on /. about architects using off the shelf stuff and quake 3 for virtural walk throughs of buildings they've yet to build?

Video Game engines

[Thalias]

I like this idea. Using video game engines has potenial. I mean things like sim city could definately be used. Other things such as quake or Counter-strike could be used for classes such as physics. It could be used to show how motions and forces work, when variables are set at different levels. I thought movies would also make great teaching aids too, something that will get students interested in what is being taught. Lastly all the flashy graphics games could be used for animation. Oh yeah playing games themselves help sometimes. Like for political type class games that involve diplomacy such as Solar Empire are good. FOML

The only way to go, IMHO (n.b. shameless self-pr)

[msouth]

As someone's sig on slashdot says, "all mammals learn by playing". I have a site where I talk about ideas like this. Science/engineering/math/philosophy/history are (according to my wild theories) actually very naturally interesting to average humans, but the presentation of them is so pathetically boring that it's no wonder that they look for something else to do when the subject gets brought up.

Video games often present optimization problems that would be rather dull if stated formally, but in the presentation of the game are quite engaging, even addictive.

My belief is that pretty much anything worth learning has this addictive element, and that, if we worked at it, we could start off sparking kids' interest, then provide more stuff to satisfy that interest, and encourage deeper exploration. Like drug pushing, basically.

Anyway, if you want to read stuff about it you can go to http://fulcrum.org/old_index.html if you want to read more about it.

You can see (with a shockwave browser, sorry) a couple of things I've done to sort of get started at

http://fulcrum.org/test/stretcher.html

http;//fulcrum.org/index.html

http://fulcrum.org/test/oodometer

i have little doubt that people will post all kinds of "Video games are exactly what kids today DON'T need! In my day a slide rule was what everyone wanted for Christmas!", etc in response to this story. But the truth is that people get into a field because something about it was intriguing to them. They learned it in spite of the way it was taught, not because of it. All I'm suggesting is that we try to make this happen less by the occasional accident and more often by design.

Everyone whines that, e.g., legislators don't know anything about technology, but then when you try to suggest a way, through making an introduction to technology fun and interesting, to fix that problem, it gets railed aganst as being nothing but glitz, etc, etc.

If you want "tough" subjects to remain an exclusive club, keep making the classes boring. If you want more people to understand the things you are interested in, you have to find a way to get them intrigued about it.

The "flippy triangle thing" on my home page is the beginning of something like that. It's an illustration of an abstract algebraic group. I'm trying to present it as an interactive art piece that will put the simple question "what is that?" in random passers-by's heads. Getting people to say "Hmmm, I wonder what that is?" about an abstract mathematical concept is a first step to a world I envision where we work as hard to entice people to "get into" science, mathematics, and history as hard as we try now to get them interested/addicted to the latest reality show stunt.

In other words, I think this guy is on the right track.

Re:The only way to go, IMHO (n.b. shameless self-p

[Goldsmith]

I agree with you completely! As a physics student, it would make my life so much nicer if I didn't have to explain to everyone why it is I want to study physics.

There is an emeritus professor at UCI working on educational physics. He was the guy who predicted and confirmed that a specific Mozart sonata stimulates different portions of your brain than most music (based on a brain communications model he was working on). Now he's making video games that train elementary school children to think visually and multidimensionally, and the puzzles are based on string theory mathmatics. It's pretty crazy, and it seems to be similar in philosophy to your site.

Only one side of the material

[upper]

There are (at least) two parts to understanding most science or engineering subjects -- theoretical and experiental, for lack of better words. I don't think you really understand something until you have both and you've tied them together. Traditional classroom teaching doesn't pay much attention to the experiental part -- in demos and labs, but only a little. For some subjects (e.g. mechanics) you can develop the experience in your daily life, and that's pretty clearly the way to go. For subjects where that doesn't work, simulations has a lot of potential. And this sounds like a good way to do the simulation. If the fidelity is adequate, great!

But you still need the theory. If you learn the experiental part without the theory, you become a technician, rather than an engineer. The theory lets you calculate where that knob should be set, rather than trying all the settings. It lets you figure out of there's any setting that will work before you build the plant. And it lets you program simulators.

I don't see how any simulator can teach the theory. I usually find that if I have the simulator, I spend lots of time playing with it, and I can confirm my understanding of theory I know, but I can't learn new theory.

Probably too late for this to be modded up...

[Vito]

...but I'll try anyway.

A few years ago, working on Unrealty (an Unreal-engine based 3D walkthrough app), things like this came up. Adding solid modelling, so you could cut through character and other models and have an "inside" to work with (I think the suggestion was for dentistry simulation). Integrating a physics engine for basic engineering tests.

Now, the latest Unreal engine tech is extremely powerful, with great physics available via MathEngine's Karma engine. Modifications and custom code and maps is anecdotally easier than with Quake * thanks to better editing tools and the UnrealScript interpreted language (and the recent fact that subtractive geometry is no longer the dominant design tool).

I wonder, then, if an Unrealty-esque system, with better level and physics design docs, aimed at engineers and such, would garner interest? I wouldn't expect the engineers to have enough time and artistic skills both to create their own content from scratch; but they could modify physical properties of existing objects easily enough. What would have to be part of the package, both documentation- and content-wise, to make it usable? Assuming it's not much more than the stock game engine, made suitable for education use by the removal of the "game" portions.