27 – 3D Visualization from a Video Game Perspective
Turning civil engineering projects essentially into video games has been a passion of mine for a while and is at the core of the mission of Civil FX. In this episode of the podcast I break down why you should pay attention to the video game world and how we can learn from the more interactive cousin of 3D visualization.
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Civil FX Update
- Tentative plan to start the first visualization challenge on Jan 1, 2015. More info coming soon.
- Congrats to Mark and Nick for leaving the best comments as per my challenge a few weeks ago.
- Check out the latest blog posts from this past week: An Honest Review of InfraWorks and a How To video on getting terrain into InfraWorks for free.
Why we should pay attention to video games
- My history with video games
- My experience with clients has shown that they really appreciate interactive meetings
- I feel that much of the future in 3D visualization for both architects and civil engineering is real-time
- The budgets of big games allow them to be the leading edge of this technology
- Many of these tools are now available for us to use
- The trick is how to bridge the gap between CAD and these tools
What we can learn from the gaming world
- Whole world modeling vs corridor modeling
- Rethink traditional rendering
- Hiring for visualization teams should focus sometimes on those with gaming backgrounds
- Custom textures vs tiles textures
- Interactive worlds
- I want to turn your project into a video game
Question of the day
- Should I use the term ‘video game’ on my website and when speaking with potential clients? (let us know in the comments!)
- UPDATE: Interesting conversation going on about the question of the day in the LinkedIn Group.
Hey Sam. I think your idea of creating visualizations integrating aspects of video games/movie animations to make an interactive model is great. As far as using the term vide game in marketing I can see why that may not sound professional, but I am not exactly qualified to answer that. I love the idea/goal though.
Thanks Mark. I already removed ‘video game’ from my description on LinkedIn in part based to feedback from others with similar responses to your own. I think interactivity is the future but we don’t have to call it ‘video games’ if we don’t feel it is best for industry, even if it is kind of the same thing.
I think the idea of calling it video game is not optimal for several reasons: 1. is the obvious frivolity that was mentioned in the pod cast, 2. ‘Video Game’ is a stale and broad term. The industry is so diverse that it includes casual games which will never communicate information on the scale of what you are doing. Minecraft is a modern video game yet that is no where where you want to be in terms of conceptualization. so if you moved forward with a term like video game you would have to have the rider like ‘Video Game – Like grand theft auto or modern call of duty’ which does not bode well for really communicating your idea. 3. You are arguably doing something new and as such really needs to own its own term.
I might call it something like free will modeling or real space modeling… open path… not exactly sure what phrasing would give it that buzz, but i think it should communicate the idea of the experience…. open user path… i got nothing haha, but i def think it needs its own terms.