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NASA Playing With Unreal Engine For Virtual World
An anonymous reader writes "Daniel Laughlin, Project Manager for NASA's Learning Technologies Office spoke at the International Space Flight Museum in SecondLife and said that they are using the Unreal 3 Engine to create a synthetic world for training. The mission? The moon by 2020, and Mars by 2035. He said, 'We are combining the efforts of a commercial game developer, two universities and two NASA mission directorates into the project. If we can't check off all three boxes at the end, then we'll have done a poor job.'"
I always preferd the low-grav levels myself :)
Our diversity is our strength
is to find a way to play video games at work. I'd be more inclined to believe it was work related if there really were gun toting zombies on the Moon.
* Armstrong decapitates Martian with the Shock Rifle * Armstrong decapitates Martian with the Shock Rifle ** DOUBLE KILL **
"I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability."-Oscar Wilde
And a good thing, too, or they'd be completely unprepared for the Skaarj - and that's only if they make it out of the prison ship!
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
It's $350K for heavens sake! Why not http://www.ogre3d.org/ coupled with http://www.ode.org/? Surely combining those with 2 university departments where you'll no doubt find people already familiar with the source code would be a more sensible approach to developing serious games.
Sheesh. Money to burn.
Also converting between nautical miles, and standard miles.
This is a project that should be open sourced. I bet there are alot of folks that would love to work on something like this.
Too bad the gravity gun will suck.
I know there's speculation of water on the moon and Mars. But I didn't think there was enough for any type of water vehicle. Maybe that's part of the post-terraforming stage of the game? :)
low grav w/ insta kills was fun! The engine is so fast and dead-on accurate compared to many others.. /shrug ;)
..somebody get on that
I am not sure on UT3.. but with the second engine in a mod like Red Orchestra you could see the limitations of it.
For instance... snipping across the map w/ full res up. The trees disappear on the horizon allowing you to shoot people through them. The dead guy thinks he was concealed behind some branches.
I assume the UT3 engine will take care of this
In time, a virtual earth to run/fly/shop, look at mapping, etc. with this engine would be fun stuff.
Kill your TV
Ok, since you bring up "politics": I wonder if the United States would have spent the money we've sunk into invading Iraq on a Mars mission how close we'd be to astronauts on the Red Planet?
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Go check out the developer's web site
http://www.virtualheroes.com/
There is a USA Today News release talking about this very thing.
So what are our options for trickjumping, wallhacking, ... on the moon and mars?
Dependency hell? =>
Uh oh. Time to don the asbestos suits. (o:
I agree, though; The project is ambitious, and without the proper funding I'm not sure that it will happen. The Democratic party tends to spend more on socialism^H^H^H programs. We'll see, though. I think that everyone can see that R&D in the space program has created enormous benefits for everybody. Hopefully NASA will get the funding it needs and more.
Love sees no species.
By then they can start using Duke Nukem Forever.
fuvoo: watch something
For the Mars mission, I think the Doom 3 engine would have been better. Anyone else agree?
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
wouldn't effort be better spent on getting the nitty gritty very detailed physics down first and dedicating the majority of processing power to that? for professional applications like what I can forsee nasa needing a nice overly pretty 3d engine would be the least of their concerns. if accuracy is really needed for rendering I just wouldn't trust most 3d hardware either.
if the simulator gets to the point it simulates the stress and forces on all hardware involved to some insanely small degree, thats awesome imho. If your doing that level of computation however, bah to graphics, secondary thought.
Hopefully. NASA is washed up, tied up in red tape to the point where we need to rely on the space agency of a former communist country to do all the real work in space exploration. Perhaps the emergence of private sector investors can lead the way in space exploration / space transit. Let NASA do what NASA has become known for, and thats scientific research, not space travel (perhaps it once was, but anyone needing to put anything into space knows its cheaper to do it from Russia/Kyrzig). NASA like all government agencies go from doing one thing well (which it is designed for) to only spending money well and doing everything else in a piss poor fashion.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
considering that it was a republican who stopped the apollo missions early I don't think so.
The Democrats took us into space(Kennedy, Johnson). Republicans took us out of it(Nixon).
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Memorandum
To: Sim training participants
From: SIMCOM
A number of items have come to our attention regarding the simulation procedures for the upcoming moon landing, and clarification is required on a number of points:
1. Rocket jumping or use of stun grenades for propulsion will not be feasible, please stop requesting these items from the mission planners.
2. As you will be physically on the moon, there will be no "l4gging".
3. Please do not accuse fellow trainees of "hax". It has become a growing morale issue.
4. "Pwnage" is not an approved item in the radio communication guide for NASA missions. Please stick with standardized phrasing for clarity.
5. When on the moon, the action of "strafing" sideways will not be practical in the EVAsuits, so please take this into consideration. Also, there have been a number of collisions and falls in the hallways from sim trainees attempting to employ this walking method. The base physician has speculated that the unnatural gait is causing people to literally "trip over themselves", so please stop.
6. Two of the inflatable habitats have lost pressurization during tests because of inadvertent puncturing. Subsequent interviews have revealed that trainees were looking for "wall hacks" and accidentally damaging the structure. This could cause a significant safety problem during the mission, so please use care.
Finally, the practice of attaching large "sig" images to all internal e-mails has become disruptive. The use of animated gifs with flashing text and, in some unfortunate cases, nudity, has become both a workplace harassment hazard as well as a visual distraction. Please use the standard signature generator to create a plain text sig with your contact information.
Regards,
SIMCOM
Office of simulation
I'm not sure I understand this correctly; from the quote (in the article which I DID read) it seems like the metric of success is who they are including. Shouldn't the metric of success for a simulator be how well they are training the astronauts or, for an educational learning tool, how well they are introducing concepts to their students?
Please don't tell me that this project is mainly driven by the desire to include as many different organizations together. This sounds like trying to have the space shuttle being built in as many congressional districts as possible to spread the pork around.
No I didn't read the article, but judging from the blurb I can assume they plan to be able to fake another moon landing using the Unreal Engine by 2020, and a further Mars landing by 2035? Amazing.
I would expect it to be using better and cheaper software with no lies associated with it. Prior it would simply have been killed in NASA. Later, KBR would show up with a virtual world system to sell the DOD for 10 million, with an additional 20-100 million support contract that would be fully funded.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
/* somewhat functional - fix later */
2. Wasting money on the wrong company's tech. There are graphics companies that specialize in these types of projects that can provide custom tech that matches what they are trying to accomplish with the goals of this project for much less money.
I mostly agree with you. But show us one of these, that use normal hardware, is multiuser (multiplayer?), as sound, and has good tools to create content. Yea,that, give us urls.
-Woof woof woof!
Wouldn't the Doom 3 engine be more fitting or are they saving that for the Mars mission training scenarios?
Exactly. It has created a business for someone; That helps the economy. Other helpful technologies include the microwave, advances in ceramics, long distance communications, and specialized plastics. All of that technology eventually comes to the general public. Space program is costly but well worth the money.
Love sees no species.
Don't forget velcro and space ice cream! Mmmmm, space ice cream
You know, Custer had a plan.
... of an astronaut after his two fellows died in the exploding return-vehicle: "Double Kill!" After another look on his oxygen indicator: "Multi Kill!"
The problem in the past is the same as any other industry ... the lack of competition.
The U.S. *did* great in the space race against the Soviet Union. Then they started working on the shuttle (and the space station to compete with MIR), then in the early 90s the Soviet Union imploded.
Suddenly there was only a token competitor (nothing against the Russian space program, but the Russian people had other more pressing domestic concerns).
Now we're seeing the rise of a Chinese and Indian space program, and the U.S. is starting to pick up pace again. "Surprise"
Access to Mars (and the asteroid belt), would provide a ridiculous supply of raw materials, and a possible future home (depending on colonization and terra-forming).
With luck this will be the "Space Race 2.0" which seems like a good thing for everyone.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
I'm just hoping they get all the units in the code straight, or Mars crashes.
KFG
SL is a virtual world, but it's a pretty crappy example of the tech.
This is getting as annoying as my mom constantly referring to herself as 'surfing the blogs' and for pretty much the same reasons.
Note to article writers: referring to Second Life as some sort of euphemism for Virtual World does a huge disservice to the many, many shared-world 3d engines that are out there, as well simply convincing everyone that you don't know anything about it.
Second Life is an absolutely horrific application of virtual world concepts, novel only in the universality of rights it gives its participants. The graphics are atrocious (1990 would like its polygons back, please), performance is sub-abysmal (is it normal that when I see more than 4 people on my screen, my fps drops to 3?), and efficiencies are nonexistent (I recall one of the Linden Labs guy referring to it running on 000's of servers...which, if true, suggests that they're running no more than about 1 server per 10 players online at a time).
To put it bluntly, I was a beta tester of the "Visual OS" ViOS that was never released. I cannot see anything in Second Life in 2006 that is superior to what ViOS was in the 1990s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViOS (and it's successor Croquet looks to do everything SL does, even better).
A brief glance at Wiki's MMOG list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MMORPGs) lists 9 3D-based MMOGs just in the A's that all look substantially better and perform (AFAIK) substantially better than Second Life.
-Styopa
>he Democratic party tends to spend more on socialism^H^H^H programs.
Right, I can't get enough of this free healthcare and free education here in the states! Oh wait. For reference the money spent in Iraq could have funded a manned Mars mission. Maybe two. You can thank the republicans for that.
Sure,the moon program was started by Eisenhower but it was JFK who paid for it, pushed it, and made it happen. He was a democrat.
Moon by 2020, Mars by 2035? Right. And in 1970 they were saying we'd be on mars now. NASA just wants to keep the money coming; if they do manage to even get back to the moon by 2020, they'll be staying at a Chinese or Brazilian base there. Maybe the Chinese will let us visit the Glorious People's Space Colony of Mars. If NASA wants to stay ahead, they've got to start running faster.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
It would be great (read *great*) if they would integrate this new virtual world work with their existing NASA World Wind.
Animoog.org
Bullshit. The Democrats got us into a pointless boondoggle space race that collapsed under its own weight. if we had done thingsa in a properly paced manner, Martin Landau really could have been working on the moon in 1999.
And it was the hard work of thousands of dedicated technical people that took us into space, not some cocksucking politicians.
I really wish all Party loyalists would just die already.
SL is still stuck with havok1. How is this cutting edge? There is havok3 already. When SL was nearing 1.9.9 everybody though - oh right, it's almost 2.0 with havok2. But now we have 1.13.0.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
I wonder if NASA also has plans to make particle weapons to exterminate all of the gun wielding aliens on Mars.
All the better for preparing for the inevitable scrootch-gun battles with Gidney and Cloyd and their army of Monstrous Mechanical Metal-Munching Moon Mice.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I would think the Havok Engine (as used in HL2) would be a better choice. Unreal is more of a arcade engine. Maybe they added more physics in the new Unreal Engine?
In other news, since 2035, the Olympics have become purely virtual. No longer do athletes train their physical bodies, as we've all learned in 2025 that it's definitely mind over body. This proto-android controlled telepathically by a pro-gamer is simultaneously better at and impossible-to-beat-in all Olympic sports. Since then, all athletes (including boxers and sumo wrestlers) have converted to telepathically connecting to FightBots whose HP are directly proportional to the athlete's IQ.
War, also, has become less of a national tragedy. No longer do millions of soldiers dying causelessly. The world now has scrap-metal cemetaries and designated "dead-zones" for the billions of proto-droids whose existence have devolved in the name of human-decreed-entropy. Gamers who control these droids often get pissed their that their console quits working in the middle of a pointless war, and they engage their smaller robots in local brawls and gangwars.
Can you imagine this happening?
Don't get me wrong, I think spending money on space, for space, is justifiable. But not because, hey, there's a 0.01% chance that it will result in an improved vaccum cleaner or a tasty breakfast beverage.
JFK was a Democrat and if it weren't for his speech we probably wouldn't have gotten on the moon in 1969.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Forget Mars, we could be well on our way to Jupiter. According to this we are talking about a little under $350 billion or so. This will be much more before a successful exit.
See my journal, I write things there
No, nautical mile probably will not be used even when Mars is terraformed. Even if it is used, it will not be the same as the Earth's nautical mile.
Here lies the definition:
Nautical Mile is the a minute of arc along a meridian of the Earth.
The Unreal Engine is merely a proof-of-concept device. It will be used to lay the R&D groundwork for the much more powerful Infinite Improbability Drive.
The U.S. Constitution needs to be ammended with a "separation of business and state" clause.
... are very interesting. A part of it [highearthorbit.com]: "The details are fairly light, but it seems as though NASA is building a VR game on space exploration (remember Microsoft's Space Simulator [planetmic.com], or the free and open-source Orbiter [ucl.ac.uk]?). I wonder why NASA is rebuilding their own engine rather then picking up and using existing simulators (like Open-SESSAME [sf.net]) on top of the Unreal graphics/physics engine."
Animoog.org
That's a great idea. Using a 3D engine to generate fake pictures of Man landing on the moon should be much easier than the last time when they actually filmed the whole thing on earth. Plus, when the uncooperative truth tellers stick evidence of the fake in the video, they can just regenerate it!
What other kind of engine would you use in a Virtual world? If NASA used a real F-1 engine, it would probably destroy the server!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Unlike your blasting of the Dem's, I did not stick up for them. I do think that things will be better, but not because the Dem's are in control. Things will be better because NOBODY can control. Republicans have control of the white house. The house is under control of the Dem's. But the senate is not controlled by either party. The republicans have 49 with VP as head of the senate giving them 50. The Dem's have 50. And Lieberman is an independent who will be voting towards the Dem's, but not always. In particular, I suspect that he will tweak the Dem's on a number of issues.
So, perhaps, you need a class on logic, how to count, and manners.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Funny, yes, but who the hell modded this informative?