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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...
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.
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.
Oops - I take the $350K back (heh - I wish!)...no I didn't RTFA (c'mon...this *is* /. after all). They'll of course be using custom license http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/licensing/ter ms.shtml. But I still stand by the "why not FOSS?" question.
This is precisely the kind of project that could both benefit and benefit from the FOSS paradigm, especially considering the duration of the projects. Who knows what's going to happen to Epic over the next 20-odd years?
I know this is really just NASA wanting some kind of PR exercise, but the concerns of their launch technology (if you excuse the pun) not being available throughout the duration ought to have some sway over how they approach the project.
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.
Unreal is a very good engine. Ogre and all the other open source engines are not. They want something that will get out of their way, so they can spend their valuable time on creating an application, not bringing a 3D engine up to speed.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
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.
That's a fairly sweeping statement. I guess ogre being not particularly good and needing bringing up to speed was why they were one of the Google Summer of Code participants?
You might want to, oh I don't know, actually find out about the OSS tech you slate before hitting the submit button.
I suggest http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option=com_conten
I'm just hoping they get all the units in the code straight, or Mars crashes.
KFG
While Ogre3D looks fairly good it's very possible it doesn't have the power and flexibility of the Unreal Engine. And more importantly, the licensing of that engine is certainly going to include extensive support. Imagine some NASA developer being forced to browse Ogre3D forums and being called a noob for asking questions.
NASA wants the engine to enabler, not to become an obstacle they themselves have to fix every time they encounter a shortcoming. This is not to put down engines like Ogre3D at all. But if they have the money to spend, why not spend it on a system that is robust and is well-supported.
Uh, yeah. If it was good and up to speed, it wouldn't have needed to be a google summer of code participant. See, the summer of code was for writing code. Stop me if this isn't making sense, and I'll see if I can use smaller words.
I hate this fucking argument. Not everyone is a programmer. Build a bridge, and get over this fact. There's lots of valuable skills out there and programming is only one of them. If someone says that a program needs help, they're not automatically wrong if they aren't one.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.