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NASA Playing With Unreal Engine For Virtual World

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Nov 22, 2006 10:31 AM
from the practicing-martian-genocide dept.
NASA Mars Space
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.'"
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  • Cool (Score:3, Funny)

    by _the_bascule (740525) on Wednesday November 22 2006, @10:34AM (#16950602)
    I always preferd the low-grav levels myself :)

  • Your mission should you decide to accept it.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by edwardpickman (965122) on Wednesday November 22 2006, @10:34AM (#16950618)
    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.

  • Sweet.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by le0p (932717) * on Wednesday November 22 2006, @10:35AM (#16950640)
    * Armstrong decapitates Martian with the Shock Rifle * Armstrong decapitates Martian with the Shock Rifle ** DOUBLE KILL **

  • Oblig. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Control Group (105494) * on Wednesday November 22 2006, @10:39AM (#16950702) Homepage
    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!

  • This would be a fun project (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2006, @10:43AM (#16950770)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kilgortrout (674919)
      Especially since our tax dollars are paying for all this.
    • 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.

      Sure - they'd love to work on it. The question is, can they actually bring anything useful to the table? Designing a simulator/trainer with reasonable fidelity is a very different thing from designing a game.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by megavlad (864517)
      Damn, I missed this oportunity. NASA could have really helped me out. I've been working on a Open Sourced game platform for a few years now, and I was schedule to release a 0.1.0-alpha by the beginning of next month (december). But I have had so manny setbacks (do to the everyday life) that it'll probably be at mid-January.

      A few years ago I was talking to an awesome developer that I knew. We were talking about Linux. He made a statement that really stuck to me. He said "I love Linux. It's such a great p

  • 9.8 m/s/s (Score:3, Funny)

    by gadzook33 (740455) on Wednesday November 22 2006, @10:44AM (#16950782)
    Too bad the gravity gun will suck.
  • So what are our options for trickjumping, wallhacking, ... on the moon and mars?

  • Duke Nukem (Score:4, Funny)

    by Virtual Karma (862416) on Wednesday November 22 2006, @10:55AM (#16950974) Homepage
    The mission? The moon by 2020, and Mars by 2035.

    By then they can start using Duke Nukem Forever.

  • Wrong engine (Score:5, Funny)

    by TodMinuit (1026042) <todminuit&gmail,com> on Wednesday November 22 2006, @10:55AM (#16950978)
    For the Mars mission, I think the Doom 3 engine would have been better. Anyone else agree?

  • Safety memorandum (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chairboy (88841) on Wednesday November 22 2006, @11:01AM (#16951084) Homepage
    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

  • Is the metric of success wrong? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wisebabo (638845) on Wednesday November 22 2006, @11:02AM (#16951088) Journal
    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.
  • Wouldn't the Doom 3 engine be more fitting or are they saving that for the Mars mission training scenarios?
  • 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 w
  • 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.
  • It would be great (read *great*) if they would integrate this new virtual world work with their existing NASA World Wind [nasa.gov].
  • 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.
      • 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? :)
    • 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?
    • 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.
      • 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
      • >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.
        • 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.
          • That is a specious argument. The question is, would the same money have yielded even better results spent elsewhere? Perhaps on projects like the Darpa desert race grand challenge, or even on more socialstic things like college scholarships or pre-K programs?

            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.

    • 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).
      • 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.
    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Lissajous (989738)
      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 [unrealtechnology.com]. 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 so

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by TodMinuit (1026042)
        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.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Lissajous (989738)

          Unreal is a very good engine. Ogre and all the other open source engines are not.

          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_content &task=view&id=394&Itemid=2 [ogre3d.org] would be a good place to start. Then if y

          • 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?

            Yes, exactly. And its a far cry for UT, lacking physics and other features. And even in rendering other open source packages like OpenSceneGraph are a lot better. (And are used at NASA on other projects). Remember, NASA is looking for results, now, not for a long development cycle...

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by drinkypoo (153816)

            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?

            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.

            Oh, and whilst you're there, fix what you think is wrong with it, and submit it. See - that's how OSS works.

            I hate this fucking argum

        • Comparing Ogre and Unreal is comparing apples with oranges.

          Ogre is only a rendering engine. Unreal is not only that, it include the necessary high level framework, scripting integration, and editing tools to make a game.

          There is no open source equivalent of this stuff that I know of at the time. And all that high level and toolset stuff is hard to get right, even for most video game companies who often develop awful solutions for this stuff.
          • There is no open source equivalent of this stuff that I know of at the time.

            Sauerbraten [sauerbraten.org]

            • Yes, I've seen this. Cube was already nifty and Sauerbraten is indeed very cool.

              However, as far as I could tell, while editing the scenery is easy and flexible, adding new kind of entities can't be just done with some scripting and editing some properties.

              But this is very cool indeed. With some development, that thing could have the potential to put second life to shame.

              • However, as far as I could tell, while editing the scenery is easy and flexible, adding new kind of entities can't be just done with some scripting and editing some properties.

                Given that it can be done in-game, my guess is that a talented programmer could add this functionality pretty quickly.

                But this is very cool indeed. With some development, that thing could have the potential to put second life to shame.

                Absolutely. All Sauerbraten needs is server access level control (so you can limit who can

      • I love Ogre3D, I use it myself for small game projects, but I don't think you could compare it to the Unreal 3 Engine. NASA would have to spend over $350k just to bring the Ogre3D engine upto spec with the Unreal engine, so why not just buy the Unreal engine and save a lot of time and money by not reinventing the wheel.

        Ogre3D is mainly a graphics engine (Ogre stands for Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine), where as the Unreal Engine is a complete game engine with graphics, AI, networking code, physic

    • This is ancient news, really.

      I was developing another product back in 2001, and we evaluated the Unreal kit back then. As a part of our evaluation, we were shown an ISS model which had been developed with NASA cooperation for some projects they were pursuing back then. Since that time, geeks like Shuttleworth and Ansari have been to the real ISS, and soon Simonyi too. The world of software has changed in radical ways in a very few years.

    • Re:Why UT3? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MaWeiTao (908546) on Wednesday November 22 2006, @11:42AM (#16951928)
      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.
    • 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. /shrug
      I assume the UT3 engine will take care of this ;)

      Yes, on the moon and mars you will be unable to snipe through the trees. :P

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by kfg (145172)
      I'm just hoping they get all the units in the code straight, or Mars crashes.

      KFG

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