The interesting part of the game City Life is its rendering engine and the ability to import your own buildings direct from 3D Max.
We had to mention that first as loading a game up during office hours has been greeted with calls of 'he gets paid to play games' and 'I thought only 10 year olds used video games'. You would of thought researchers, especially in this field, would know better but sometimes you just have to shrug and realise that your on to something that others can't see.
If we can load some of Virtual London models into City Life and use the game engine to automatically populate it and allow real-time flythroughs then the 'game' suddenly becomes interesting. The movie above illustrates our first steps in City Life and should provide an insight into the visualisation possibilities.
Now if this render engine linked with Google Earth? This is how we would like to zoom into cities with the locations populated with avatars - a mix of Google Earth/City Life and Second Life.. thats the killer application for city visualisation.
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I am completely in agreement with you. There are some amazing 3D world and city builders that are on the surface intended for 'gaming' but can be used for the ultimate digital living city.
ReplyDeleteMy imagination is for the world's greatest cities to be available as living and breathing digital models with working theme parks, a Champ Car or F1 race, AI public transit, and open interiors like actual museums. In short, anything that is operational in the actual city would be animated or interactive in this model. I have been visualizing this concept for years, not at all for 'gaming' per se, but as a tool for educators, students, and the handicapped, who would ordinarily not be able to travel to these places but would be able to 'visit' them by receiving off-the-shelf models of places like Toronto, Mexico City, and Los Angeles.
The world editors behind Auran's Trainz, City Life, and even some racing games are ABSOLUTELY able to make this a reality.