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

Re:Video Game engines

[Soul-Burn666]

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.

Well..

[RaboKrabekian]

Has anyone used video game technology as an education tool

Grand Theft Auto taught me all about how to run people over and blow things up. I now have a PHD in urban terrorism.

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.