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.'"

Cool

[_the_bascule (740525)]

I always preferd the low-grav levels myself :)

Re:Cool

[stunt_penguin (906223)]

Just as long as they don't use the Doom 3 engine. We won't be able to find astronauts still brave enough to actually go on a real mission.

Your mission should you decide to accept it....

[edwardpickman (965122)]

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.

Re:

[Lex-Man82 (994679)]

Hey man, there are gun toting zombies on the moon why else do you think we've never been back?

Re:Your mission should you decide to accept it....

[peragrin (659227)]

ah you never played doom. The weapon wielding zombies are on Mars.

The moon is full of aliens trying to destroy us.

Re:

[edwardpickman (965122)]

Well that explains them ordering 1,000 copies of Doom 3 as "training material" for the Mars mission.

Sweet..

[le0p (932717)]

* Armstrong decapitates Martian with the Shock Rifle * Armstrong decapitates Martian with the Shock Rifle ** DOUBLE KILL **

Re:

[Harry_Ballsak (942394)]

dam bunny hopper.

Oblig.

[Control Group (105494)]

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

[by Anonymous Coward]

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:

[kilgortrout (674919)]

Especially since our tax dollars are paying for all this.

9.8 m/s/s

[gadzook33 (740455)]

Too bad the gravity gun will suck.

The Unreal Engine?

[sucker_muts (776572)]

So what are our options for trickjumping, wallhacking, ... on the moon and mars?

Duke Nukem

[Virtual Karma (862416)]

The mission? The moon by 2020, and Mars by 2035.

By then they can start using Duke Nukem Forever.

Wrong engine

[TodMinuit (1026042)]

For the Mars mission, I think the Doom 3 engine would have been better. Anyone else agree?

Safety memorandum

[Chairboy (88841)]

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?

[wisebabo (638845)]

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.

Re:

[creimer (824291)]

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? :)

Re:

[Guysmiley777 (880063)]

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?

Re:

[KermodeBear (738243)]

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.

Re:

[peragrin (659227)]

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).

Re:

[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:

[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

Re:Why UT3?

[MaWeiTao (908546)]

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.

Re:

[kfg (145172)]

I'm just hoping they get all the units in the code straight, or Mars crashes.

KFG