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Information Requested for NASA-Based MMORPG
Teancum writes "By now, most people are aware of the U.S. Army's video game, America's Army. It turns out that NASA has submitted a Request for Information for what would be a NASA-themed MMORPG of its own. The deadline for the proposals is February 15th. NASA's plans focus on education. 'A NASA-based MMO built on a game engine that includes powerful physics capabilities could support accurate in-game experimentation and research. It should simulate real NASA engineering and science missions in a medium that is comfortable and familiar to the majority of students in the United States today.' This certainly doesn't deserve to get thrown onto the traditional dust heap of educational proposals for a half-baked game that nobody will actually play."
this of course will result in the Koreans being the first on Mars.
It turns out that NASA has submitted a Request for Information for what would be a NASA-themed MMORPG of its own.
Red-shift is the new purple.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I want my avatar to be the director of NASA and propose budgets that get shot down by congress!
I think NASA is greatly overestimating the appeal of this. I mean, how would your average gamer "pwn n00bs?" Beat them to Mars? Meh, I'd play it though.
...chain gun on my Lunar Rover or will that be a quested item?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Gravity Gun
and I'm a rocket buff. Compare this to, say, Arianespace who manage to put together an educational and entertaining presentation for every launch and show it intermixed with live footage and reporting of every launch, and in two different languages.
How we know is more important than what we know.
How realistic do they want the simulations? So realistic that the technology becomes classified?
Anyway, the basic of what NASA is known for is space and rocketry missions. So for STEM (Science/Tech/Eng/Math), this covers most of this. I do not know how they will cover engineering - designing rocket engines? Heat shield tests? Vehicle-debris impact simulation?? The incredible-machine-like workshops?
Math is the most hopeless area to try to stimulate. Since they want to gear this towards regular school (high school and younger) students, not PhD math students, all they can hope for is arithmetic. Sure, they can have "difficult problems" like "solve linear system of equations", but that is not what higher level math is about. Math is about logic and nothing else. Not arithmetic.
I wish them luck. They should really think *hard* about what they want from something like this. The American Army (AA) game is a relatively simple shooter with emphasis on some "formal" training and more realistic combat (which is less fun, BTW). The NASA game may be ok only if it targets people already interested in science and allows these people to interact with each other. If the game is dumbed down to the "regular student" level, they'll end up with no one there. The geeks will think the game sucks as it provides not enough challenge and the others will think it is just some stupid "educational" game.
NASA, design it for geeks first please, and maybe you'll get what you want in the end.
Anyone remember this gem of a game? I played it for the C64 but the PC screenshots bear a pretty close resemblance.
I don't know what I should credit for my tastes in games but I am leaning towards boredom. I use to love playing UT2K4 or World of Warcraft, but after playing games since I was 12 I tend to play games now that make me think. If I don't want to think, I play popcap games. I picked Gnome as my desktop because it ships with chess. After reading this though, it gives me hope that a real game is finally going to be created.
Persistent immersive synthetic environments in the form of massive multiplayer online gaming and social virtual worlds, initially popularized as gaming and social settings, are now finding growing interest as education and training venues. There is increasing recognition that these synthetic environments can serve as powerful "hands-on" tools for teaching a range of complex subjects, including STEM-based instruction. Virtual worlds with scientifically accurate simulations could permit learners to tinker with chemical reactions in living cells, practice operating and repairing expensive equipment, and experience microgravity - making it easier to grasp complex concepts and quickly transfer this understanding to practical problems.
Notice that it refers to MMOs and not necessarily MMORPGs which, IMHO, is the most common kind of MMO. The two primary activities in MMORPGs are questing and grinding, and I don't think those activities lend themselves to accomplishing the goals NASA has set out.
So, how are they going to make this fun?
>> a NASA-themed MMORPG of its own.
What's it going to be called, My Space?
They should talk to the guy from Orbiter. It is absolutely incredible what this man has achieved. His (free!) space flight simulator not only does a great job with the physics involved (yes, orbital rendezvous' are really tricky), but also looks incredibly good on screen.
They should consider licensing the freeware space simulator Orbiter (http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/). It already supports realistic orbital (Newtonian) mechanics, and can simulate craft such as the space shuttle and the Apollo capsules, including satellite deployment, lunar rendezvous and landings.
I wonder what the encounters will be like? What kinds of character classes will I be able to roll?
kek
Are they thinking of something like Eve-Online but more "realistic"? That'd be awesome.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
"This certainly doesn't deserve to get thrown onto the traditional dust heap of educational proposals for a half-baked game that nobody will actually play."
You're right. This will be thrown on the dust heap of educational proposals for a well-cooked game that nobody will actually play. This game is toast before it even gets off the floor.
The thing NASA does best is PR. Of which they do too much. Their PR budget should be cut back, and NASA's funding for non-flight projects should be shifted to NSF.
Anyone thought of contacting Martin Schweiger over his Orbiter Simulator?
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html
I would **LOVE** to see the ideas implemented in his simulator (real Newtonian physics, Multi Function Display orbital computers, Interplanetary transfer orbits, great physics engine) implenented in a MMO environment.
My favourite part is the realistic simulator of being in the control room while astronauts are on their sleep cycle. It's like you're really there!
Five stars, will definitely play again.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Realistic NASA game, eh? I know how to do that... You are a low-mid level engineer. You job: design a space station. Someone higher up decides to make a tiny change, so you scrap the current design and restart from scratch. Repeat this over 9000 times, waste as much government funding as possible for the high score. Since everyone's work is made useless every time something is changed, why bother working at all? Play the built in solitaire and minesweeper minigames for extra fun! The less progress made the better. Hey, the space shuttle works right? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Who cares it's over 20 years old and still a prototype? Who cares that it uses equipment from the time of the dinosaurs!? Sorry, I had to troll a bit. The real progress is being made by private companies these days and NASA is just old, bloated, and generally useless.
Weaksauce as they say...
Next headline: NASA buys MySpace After Sun buying MySQL and Oracle buying BEA, this was the next logic step...
Ooh, neat! A space-science-based MMO! I can party with other astronauts and take quests like growing tomatoes in space or repairing that busted solar cell array! "Watch out for those meteors! Oh no, I've aggroed too much cosmic radiation! Do I have enough oxygen to survive an extended spacewalk?"
But then I thought about it. I'm a huge supporter of shutting down the shuttle program--IMHO, it jumped the shark a long time ago. My taxes could be much better spent on newer and more innovative space programs or even could be better spent here on earth. Who needs NASA anyhow? It's a DINOSAUR. A relic of the space race and the cold war. Let Richard Branson and the private sector innovate the "next stage". Let capitalism fund the new space race; they will do it better and cheaper than any bloated, corrupt, and inept government agency ever could.
BUT THEN... I thought about my childhood; I remembered how important the space missions seemed at the time, how important they were to our national identity. We had the Space Shuttle, and We we doing Important Things. In Space. I thought about it again. I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor in Mrs. Bartlett's class when I watched the Challenger crew "slip the surly bonds". I thought about the congressional hearings and the first time I learned what an o-ring was. I remember hearing that perhaps Christa Mcauliffe and the other crew members might have been alive during their inexorable plunge back to the ocean and how horrible that must have been. I remember seeing the reconstructed orbiter in that hangar on the news.
Since then I have followed the goings on at NASA with a somewhat skewed perception. I though it was cool how they were able to land that craft on that asteroid, and I smugly laughed at how much longer those Mars rovers have lasted down there than anyone had expected (yeah I know the engineers purposely underestimated the lifespans). I also recall with sadness the Columbia, but how we would not let that deter us. I've viewed every flight since with skepticism, but still. Space is The Future, and we're still there. I often wonder when the next mission to the moon will occur and who will undertake it. I'm a fan of science fiction, and the space program is sci-fi turned reality.
So. Perhaps the thought of a NASA-based video game, let alone an MMO, brought back the thought of my innocent childhood, back when NASA meant The Space Shuttle, and I had a three-foot-long paper model of Columbia hanging in my bedroom. How awesome would it be to explore our near-Earth environment, or maybe even the solar system without repercussion? No Challenger disaster, no Columbia breakup; no launch-pad fires and no explosions. Let me take the wheel, don that space suit, and explore the cosmos right here from my comfy chair. Let me fly through Google Sky in a realistic simulator, and let me turn over rocks on Mars; I want to go ice-fishing on Europa.
Yeah, I'd buy into that. Ooh, neat!
Cheers~
There is simply too much glass..
I think you guys might this game interesting
http://rise.unistellar.com/
Its the only game I know that claims to be an MMOSIM.
I'm going to pick the Klingons.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
NASA is a civilian agency, everything they do is released under the Freedom of Information Act.
Great space race simulator game from my childhood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin's_Race_into_Space
Just remake it as an MMO, genius.
It would be ungodly expensive to teach everyone the science behind it all. (And not just for NASA/schools, either.) What better solution than to allow anyone even slightly interested in space flight to learn all about it for under $200/year? Hell, NASA could even try to make use of all the idle cycles on every player's machine to run simulations (with users' permission, of course).
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
I hope this will not be scrapped by a sneering senior executive.
...armed with nothing other than a wig, trench coat, steel mallet, $600 in cash, and a bag of diapers. Your mission is to drive across the country from Houston, TX to Orlando, FL...
Will it feature PvP?
"most Americans don't really understand space science. "
Yep.
When you click the "External Viewpoint" button, you'd better get total silence. Millions of people have raged at Hollywood because fake explosions sell tickets.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You can't do any worthwhile experiments in any modern physics engine. It's an approximate simulation of reality, not a actual recreation. All current physics engines are working on simulating real life as close as possible and use hacks to do so.
I love the idea of a NASA MMO... But I don't think it's got -any- scientific use at all.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
MMORPG version of Robot Wars game? Count me in!
One more shuttle disaster and I'll ding lvl 60!!!
...I'm going to be coming up with these all day... Thanks /.
SWEET! I just looted a Nosecone of Negligence off A Disgruntled Engineer!
Hear me out on this one. One of the most popular "edutainment" games in recent years has been Oregon Trail. Fun for kids, and maybe, just maybe they'll learn something from it. NASA should build a massively multiplayer Oregon Trail in space. Something like Mission to Mars where you have a line of space stations between Earth and Mars, and you have to plan for supplies, deal with space junk, and other such things. Make it multiplayer so players can trade with each other at waypoints and learn the concepts of supply and demand, let them "hunt" in space somehow (not quite sure how that would work), and you'll have a generation of kids wondering exactly how to get to Mars.
Hey, it worked in the 50s with television.
Of course there already a kick ass simulator called Orbiter Space Simulator for free at http://www.orbitersim.com./ If NASA had any smarts they would contact the guy who built that and try to save themselves some $$$.
Imagine a space vehicle powered by thousands of Asian children, riding stationary bicycles for 10 cents a day.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
I would think quest items would be more along the lines of +5 Diapers of Great Storage and Sacred Binding Rubber Tubing of Torture.
this sig has been discontinued.
...and I'll start with 7 kills :-D /accidentally posted this first under anonymous coward, mods you may delete that post.
"Know but never fear the consequences of your actions."
People don't play Americas Army so they can learn about how our miltary works, and what it would be like.
They play it because it's a free online FPS game that was well made.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Please include green women who ask, "what is this human thing you call kissing." thx.
You drive cross country wearing astroDiapers so you can do the beat down on the skanky ho doin' your man.
No sooner do I get over one, then you put a better one right next to me. Bastards.
Did you mean http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/? I'm getting an 'under construction' page with your link. It looks quite interesting so far, thanks for pointing it out!
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
This project was probably suggested by the NSA, and the trip to Mars will be in real time. Imagine all the technologically elite Chinese that will give themselves heart attacks trying to accomplish the 700 day trip to Mars by eating speed at the local internet cafe. That'll solve those covert data-mining issues they're having with them!
It is easy to see from earlier posts, that one can quickly drown in the very concept of a NASA based MMO or MMORPG. I think that I would start out with the goal of creating an online version of the Space Camp experience and build up from there doing things that you can't do in Space Camp due to physical limitations. So it wouldn't be exactly like some Second Life version of the life of an Astronaut or NASA engineer. It'd be more mission oriented with minigames meant to train and educate with an emphasis on the teamwork required to complete missions. In the later stages for more experienced players, special scenarios would become available. These would be things like exotic equipment failures, introduction of new technology, asteroid deflection, or first contact, to name a few.
If the game can be fun and appealing to the demographic that goes to Space Camp right now, then it may do well enough to justify the investment.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
...this could potentially be the most boring video game every created by the hand of man, killing the public perception of space flight even more so than it already is. Please spend some time getting it right, guys.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Actually there is already an excellent Free Space Flight Simulator, its called Orbiter http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk//, you can play the Apollo missions, you can pilot the space shuttle Atlantis, you can do the HST orbit deployment, use the robotic arm. There is even a futuristic plane, the delta glider, which can take u any where in the solar system. i hope maybe this time i can get a +3 informational moderation?, come on this is interesting, wait.. where are u going, im talking to u, I WANT +3 Whatever u want pleeeeease. Thank you very much :)
Imagination is more important than knowledge @ Albert Einstein
No, no, no, not First Person Shooter... Feet per second.
Is there ANY chance that this could become a simulator for Asteroid Defese? Role-play the intricacy, both physics and political of all that it will take, from threat determination to mitigation. Who pays for what? Who does what? Do we get to use nukes? Whose? Whose button? What if if fails, where do the people on the impact ellipse migrate to? "It will impact the Pacific. If we try to move it, we may fall short and it will land on India." US says "ok", India says "we will intercept your attempt..."
Aside from the benefits of simulation, it can also help educate the public on the realities. If nothing else, YouTubes of failed attempts will mass-drive the point home.
I think it would be very cool to have a game like Sim City but rather you are creating a colony on the Moon or Mars. You start with nothing and have to build a colony that is at first dependant on a (relatively) small fixed budget from earth, and then slowly ween it off the earthlings, first through trade, and then later as you become large enough to support industrialized economy. The scope of the game would change much more than Sim City as you would start with as little as zero people, and then grow to the size of a medium sized country.
nasagame: use probe messenger
You are now online with Messenger
nasagame (Messenger): where
In slingshot maneuver.
Time to Mercury: 1137 days.
nasagame (Messenger): look
I see stars, albeit not too clearly.
nasagame (Messenger): exit
Messenger is now offline
nasagame: launch rocket
It's too cloudy. And your next rocket launch isn't for 184 days.
nasagame: build interplanetary probe
You don't have Senate Approval to build more probes.
Try going to a Senate Hearing
nasagame: go to senate hearing
You are now at a senate hearing.
Senator Lieberschvine asks you to justify section 10.4.3.17.2 of your budget.
nasagame (Senate Hearing): quit
Are you sure you want to quit? There's not many jobs for people with Ph.D's in physics.
Senator Lieberschvine is getting annoyed you haven't answered his question.
nasagame (Senate Hearing): exit
Senate rules forbid you from leaving until you address Senator Lieberschvine's question.
Senator Lieverschvine is pounding on his table.
nasagame (Senate Hearing): request bathroom break
You are in the bathroom.
nasagame (Senate Bathroom): climb through window
You have left Senate Hearings.
You have generated +150 Hate from Senator Lieberschine.
nasagame: build interplanetary probe
You don't have Senate Approval to build more probes.
Try going to a Senate Hearing
nasagame: status of voyager2
Status: Processing "take picture" request you submitted 2 hours ago.
Download status: 371 of 22154 bits received (0.0515 bits per second; 117 hours remaining)
nasagame: watch TV
Senator Lieberschine in on TV calling for your resignation.
President Bush has announced a 40% cut to your current funding to help pay for the Iraq War.
You see an ad for "Truck Driving School" and think it sounds appealing
nasagame: down not across
You have logged out.
It will be my job in the guild to keep the grant money and government funding flowing. I will have to do this by buying off Congressmen with contracts that employ workers from their district/state, launching little unambitious missions that accomplish nothing but keep us in the public eye, and making grandiose promises about putting men on Mars that I never intend to deliver on. Of course, I'll have to work with "public relations" and "lobbyist" class characters too. Won't this be fun!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Yet another game where I can get ganked by Chinese budget farmers and their bots.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Somehow I see A Tale in the Desert as a "reasonable" platform for the NASA game; collaborative effort, resources from the environment, public facilities, goals and accomplishments. Behind the scenes, they can work out such details as, "almost everyone makes their own small reactor instead of sharing one larger public one; reactors are only at 10% of capacity; 22% of a person's online time is spent sifting for Uranium; Copper is overused on connecting personal reactors to experiments and under-utilized in other areas; only 7% of players achieve their weekly quota of science experiments." Which might be what they really want to know when astronauts/players are left to fend for themselves in the game environment.
Yes, we understand these tags always apply: fud, dupe, typo, slashdotted, topic name
I would definitely love to play a game that is based on realistic science. Playing the game could be a fun learning experience for many as well as entertaining just for the sake of playing.
Battle City
Seriously though, this type of game is not cheap to make or to keep up and running. The vast majority of them fail miserably and become giant money pits. Try smaller games first. Like a game where the player 1. manipulates a satellite with the shuttles remote arm and
2. a game where the player has to build a spacecraft to travel from low earth orbit to mars and deal with real issues of travel time and resource allocation(simplified of course).
3. a game set 200 years in the future where the player manages humanities presence in space to build up an infrastructure that is capable of launching a colonization effort to the Centauri stars. Along the way they have to deal with a degenerate system on Earth, Islamic Exodus and overly aggressive Mars colonist - ok so that part is a blatant rip off the Red, Blue Green Mars trilogy and it's Dune precursor timeline, but I still like it as a plot device.
1. How a NASA-based educational MMO should be designed.
Think Big. NASA's MMO network should eventually have a worldwide support involving hundreds to thousands of NASA personnel who seed content into the system or supervise the system in various ways. It might entail tens of thousands of server nodes as well as extensively involve users machines for local processing. Naturally, some parts of the operation of the system might be outsourced, like to Amazon's or Sun's pay-as-you-go virtualized cloud computing infrastructures. NASA's MMO framework should be he definitive place worldwide to go for manufacturing knowledge -- like Wikipedia only about how to make things and simulate them and develop software to control all that. Yes, there are some sites like Marshall Brain's "How Stuff Works" but this will eclipse those by several orders of magnitude in terms of detail (and people like him would be good consultants on content if they were willing to contribute under free licenses).
The entire thing should be done under a free and open source license, including all content contributions. This may entail getting all non-NASA participants to contribute a signed document about their involvement with the project.
It should be done by NASA cooperating with the existing leaders in the open source and free software projects, like by looking at SourceForge or FSF projects (many projects already exist for physic modeling and MMORGs in a variety of ways). Hiring an existing commercial MMO group creates two conflicts -- one is that this project could detract from a current online offering, the other is that there will be a temptation not to release the details of simulation technologies (And so keep huge chunks of the software or content proprietary) or to provide older packages other than what is being commercially promoted. There is lots of knowledge in the free and open source world on how to do big systems and how to write simulation software.
Been thinking about this on and off for over ten years (including kicking around some ideas with with Al Globus in the past, not that that means he endorses anything here).
See NASA pre-proposal from about ten years ago: "Open Source Community On Manufacturing Knowledge)
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
See SSI paper of about seven years ago: "A Review of Licensing and Collaborative Development with Special Attention to the Design of Self-Replicating Space Habitat Systems"
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
Knowledge should be stored in a RDF-like approach (similar to how our Pointrel data storage system works).
http://pointrel.sourceforge.net/
Open software architectures should be used, like our PataPata project tried (similar to Squeak or Python, maybe on Java):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/patapata
Overall architecture will be a hierarchy of simulated activities, structured across a loose meshwork of nodes. There will also be multiple levels of realism and detail.
It should be planned as incremental and evolutionary changes as hardware and software continue to improve -- in part from the use of this system itself for design and simulation.
2. How a NASA-based educational MMO should support both formal and informal education efforts.
Make a general learning tool usable by everyone; create safer filtered whitelisted subsets of it for use in classrooms. The use of an RDF-like approach helps support this kind of tagging and filtering across multiple data sources.
3. How a NASA-based educational MMO should connect to current and future NASA missions.
Add NASA data and knowledge to the system including detailed plans for NASA equipment. Participants will help desig
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Soldiers in the army don't spend a majority of their time doing the sort of things they do in the game America's Army. That's ok. The game designers took the bits that would make a compelling game experience and used them.
There are plenty of cool things NASA do, that could be turned into compelling game play.
* design a new space ship or habitat (think sim city in space)
* launch your ship, explore the solar system and see Saturn's rings up close (obviously you'd have a 'skip ahead in time' function) - learn to do sling shot manoveurs and compete to find more and more fuel efficient tactics (NASA has amazing footage that could be turned into very realistic 3D models)
* land on a planet or moon, reach your objective and perform an experiment against a deadline (ever play "lunar lander" ?)
But if they want to inspire the current generation of children, I believe they need to go beyond the current state of the art. Don't show the current space program. Show how NASA would like to see things in 20 or 50 years time. Have a colony on Mars that needs supply trips from Earth, and scouting for mineral resources on Mars. Have asteroid mining missions. Have competing commercial groups setting up self-sufficient Lunar bases. Have carbon nanotube bean stalks and off-planet trade. Inspire them!
1) interpret it as a military expenditure, the constitution allows the federal government to spend money toward the national defense.
2) The research effects the economy, whether or not it's more beneficial leaving it in the hands of the tax payers than is a matter of debate(Research is a market failure that we try to fix with patents, but even they don't provide enough incentive for very long-term research). This research effects multiple states, and so we then can justify it by the interstate commerce clause.
The constitution is much more flexible than you imply.
As long as it is not narrated by the female voice that does "ISS Mission Coverage" on the NASA channel.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
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What with NASA currently fighting tooth and nail to keep their funding, why is NASA looking to spent what money they have on Video Games?
Not impressed.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.