This could be interesting.....

[Murray_H]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3507531.stm

The software Earth is being created for the US Army by gaming company There, which is currently working on a virtual world for gamers.

The first version of the virtual planet should be finished by September.

Oh....

However, currently the virtual Earth is almost bare as the only thing modelled in any detail is part of Kuwait City.

Ah well, would make a great MP map for some generic FPS shooter!

 

[Prince of China]

So- there will be people in the "Earth" simulation who masturbate?
And do even worse stuff?

 

[spookymooky]

they want a realistic portrayal of earth? Why not use CS?

 

[Stitch]

D'**** -- So we get to walk around in a virtual Earth. Wow I wouldn't mind walking around the mountains of Europe.

 

[Anthraxxx]

they want a realistic portrayal of earth? Why not use CS?

Wow. I hope that reference to CS was supposed to be sarcasm.... XP

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

I've always thought it would be cool if they actually created a virtual earth. Imagine if they could actually create every town, down to the smallest house. You could actually visit the town of someone you meet on the internet, without needing to go there.

 

[marksmanHL2 :)]

lol, that would take so much out of life. But it would be convienient.



Sounds interesting none the less

 

[Maxi]

Wow that would be awsome! But so wrong in many ways....

 

[Zakat]

Well, there's a MMORPG that has the entire Earth in real-scale, it's a sci-fi MMORPG tho so some cities don't exist etc, but it has it in full-scale along with the moon and the L1-5 points.

 

[Zakat]

This thing seems like it'll suck anyway, look at the graphics

 

[The Dark Elf]

So their building the virtual earth, and earth where there are still large area's we don't know anything about. With realistic interactions, where they can study how people react (so they must have probed individual minds then huh), and they've only got Kuwait done so far but it'll be done for September


mmkay then

 

[mchammer75040]

So their building the virtual earth, and earth where there are still large area's we don't know anything about. With realistic interactions, where they can study how people react (so they must have probed individual minds then huh), and they've only got Kuwait done so far but it'll be done for September


mmkay then

lol you make it sound so bad..but yea I dont think its gonna be all that entertaining.

 

[spookymooky]

Wow. I hope that reference to CS was supposed to be sarcasm.... XP

actually, it was...

 

[The Dark Elf]

lol you make it sound so bad..but yea I dont think its gonna be all that entertaining.

I know first hand its not going to be what their claiming. Anyone expecting some wonderful simulation of Earth with graphics similar to HL2 and FarCry are going to be sorely dissapointed, you can't simulate the Earth in a few months, or even a few years, not to any great degree. The best its going to look is very simple. Closer to those old Microsoft flight sims than to FarCry, HL2 and Stalker.

Basic landscape and simplified objects, thats about as far as its going to go im afraid. The military don't care about it looking good, so long as it serves a purpose.. Look at it this way, even putting together DEM maps of the planet hasn't been fully completed, just the US alone, in DEM form, connecting all the available DEM's together is huge, generating a height map larger than Photoshop could handle in one go. and that doesn't include anything but simplified height data. How they plan to place individual buildings, roads, rail systems, cities etc. and so on. Accurately like they claim, and before September is qutie beyond me. Their claims have been the source of quite a few chuckles in the industry. Military backing aside, its just too big a task to pull off accurately. When you consider how much detail exists in just a small village. How they plan to create the major cities, the deep forests, the oceans, mapping parts of the world where treaties exist to stop countries from spying on locations.. If this was atall possible, it would mean this games company now has access to confidental information on locations for military bases both enemy and ally. It would have details on many many secrets. I just don't see a company like that being allowed such sensitive information. Every government on the planet would be after it.

At best its going to be basic cubes for buildings, basic textures and basic terrain, likely using a cheat like ROAM or some procedural patterns to generate the landscape. Tree's dotted about here or there. TBH some guy at home could program a terrain engine that did the same thing

Neither can I see it become commercial. I'm sure there are many laws governing certain countries where they would not allow their countries geological data to be available like that.

It doesn't make sense. The idea is nice. But its not going to be how people hope. Not to mention a game of that scale would be incredibly dull.. Think playing that old game Delta Force but running off in the wrong direction.. That game had huge maps, but huge and empty. Something like this has no value outside of scientific study, and even then such a project would not be complete for many many decades because of the amount of data required. By then we'd have far better available.

Next we'll be getting people saying they can map the whole world in the source engine for their mods *chuckles*

 

[Dax]

I agree with Fenric one this one. How they'll pull this one off is beyond me, unless they make it very simple and basic... alá WWIIOL landscape. And as you said, there are still huge unexplored areas left. So.. yeah... sounds like complete bollox to me. Although, it might work if you had several satellites scanning the whole earth and what not. But that'd create a enormously huge amount of data that I think most home PC's aren't yet quite ready to handle. :/

 

[The Dark Elf]

I agree with Fenric one this one. How they'll pull this one off is beyond me, unless they make it very simple and basic... alá WWIIOL landscape. And as you said, there are still huge unexplored areas left. So.. yeah... sounds like complete bollox to me. Although, it might work if you had several satellites scanning the whole earth and what not. But that'd create a enormously huge amount of data that I think most home PC's aren't yet quite ready to handle. :/

Exactly, heck from what I hear most PC's can't even handle FarCry on above average settings.. no hope for planet sized

I guess they can do it - to a point. Its been done already, but again, to a point and in a very basic way. I guess they could always do as you said, use special sats to gather data, or even create a piece of software that uses current maps and outputs terrain. But even that would involve mind boggling amounts of work, not to mention such a task would be rendered, for the most part with today's progress, old and unreliable data once its done. Like painting the large bridges in the world, once you've painted it all you go back and start again because what was done first is now old and needs repainting. So the same could be said of this. Also every map is different in how its composed, how to create a program that can understand every possibility.. How to find maps for everywhere first

I haven't seen the WWIIOL landscape but I can probably guess the kind you mean heh

For it to serve as accurate upto date information for the military, they'd have to be constantly updating it. In the time it would take to map in this way the entire planet, whole towns could spring up or in the case of certain countries vanish without a trace.. Also I somehow don't see Russia being too happy about it, unless they have equal involvement. Just the data alone would pose a major terrorist threat. They changed the availability of certain DEM files because of terrorism, and certain data you just can't get hold of, such as plans to the important government buildings. There's just so many issues involved with something like this that it could be tied up with red tape before it even gets out of the door.. Who should have access to it, what kind of data should be provided. If the Military really was doing something like this, which has so many repercussions. I'm sure they could have kept it quiet and done it in a specially created in-house development team, away from prying eyes and using all the data they have. Rather than giving it to a games company when Valve, id, Microsoft and countless others show all too often that they are as secure as a back of chips.

I'm guessing its going to be more like whats already out there, there's a 3D map you can download freely (though costs to register it) using official sources. 90% of it is empty, with pretty much only basic maps for the US, even less for the UK and next to nothing elsewhere. So it'll be a few cities here and there, lots of promises of mapping the world accurately, then a few years down the line someone will say "oh hey, remember this? I wonder what happened to that"

Or its just some PR stunt for their new game, yet another dev team trying to get on the MMORPG bandwagon and drum up some interest..

Either way good luck to them, but I seriously think they've bitten off more than they can chew.. And to add, trying to be politically correct It either took God 7 days to create the earth, or billions of years of evolution, whichever way you look at it, its no small task.. So what chance does a dev team have doing it in a few months, digital or not... They should stick to small islands or area's of the planet, Blizzard and even Tolkien didn't try re-create a fully functional world, just parts of it, Bethsoft pushed the boundries but still wouldn't do an entire planet. And I'd say they all knew what they were doing, judging by how popular/respected/profitable they are.

But no, I really am waiting for someone to claim they will do the Earth in Source now, once they've read the article you can bet your arse someone is going to claim it lol.. "Hey, our mod will be the size of the Earth, with thousands of AI NPC's doing their own thing, and you can do anything you want and it all effects the planet"... yup, someone is gonna say it eventually... and it'll be someone without a team too, or a design doc. Just a single post in Help Wanted most likely followed by replies from me, Badger, Pendragon and the usual "you've got to be kidding me" posse


Edit: ok now I have http://www5.playnet.com/screens/1000/14862/wwiiol_097.jpg yep, thats about the level to expect, oh dear

 

[Stitch]

A few trees and bushels every three kilometres.

 

[Murray_H]

Well 2/3 of their work can be done in the blink of an eye.......just borrow Source's water shader and you're done

(Stitch - PMs )

 

[The Dark Elf]

Well 2/3 of their work can be done in the blink of an eye.......just borrow Source's water shader and you're done

(Stitch - PMs )

lol ahh so thats their secret

 

[FictiousWill]

What's that nvidia promo map thingy called? keyhole view I think.