Abstract
Abstract. Current attempts to integrate gaming, geospatial and AEC technologies are driven by increased hardware capabilities and target virtual worlds as close to reality as possible. In this paper we pursue a converse destination and populate low-tech virtual worlds from geospatial data, building and city models, specifically for retro gaming engines in spatial chat tools. We consider an island, a building and a city district scenario and populate these scenarios from OSM, IFC, and CityGML data sources. The derived worlds are targeting use cases in business, educational and recreational settings. Based on a prototypical implementation, we study the feasibility and limitations of good quality retro gaming map generation with automatic means from existing data sets, but also the potential of such worlds for Green IT, accessibility and inspiration of new user groups. We describe the algorithms and processes to generate the maps and outline the concept for a user survey. Beyond that, by discussing map generation techniques from classical gaming in context of and comparison with geospatial and AEC practices, this paper contributes a retrospective of early gaming techniques that might be both entertaining and informative for current development practice.
Highlights
We see a convergence of virtual worlds with the real world inspiring a mutual rapprochement of the gaming and geospatial industry (OGC and USGIF, 2021), subsequently involving the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry with a longer history of VR/AR and gaming affirmation (Bille et al, 2014)
The data source for this scenario conforms to the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), a standard for open Building Information Modelling (BIM) data exchange
Based on the findings from the prototypical implementation, we discuss and conclude whether good-quality retro gaming maps can be achieved in an automated manner or need to stay a handicraft as is the case with pixel artwork
Summary
We see a convergence of virtual worlds with the real world inspiring a mutual rapprochement of the gaming and geospatial industry (OGC and USGIF, 2021), subsequently involving the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry with a longer history of VR/AR and gaming affirmation (Bille et al, 2014). Increasing hardware capabilities put this vision within reach, achievable through massive gathering of data about the natural and built environment as well as improved data processing and transmission, texturing and rendering methods to achieve real-time hyperrealistic replicas and high-resolution simulations. As such, these topics constitute fruitful and abundant areas for current research and development. The objective of our study is three-fold: We first review classical gaming techniques (Section 2), we identify use cases for their application in geospatial and built environment context (Section 3 and demonstrate prototypical implementations that populate retro gaming worlds from geospatial data and digital building models (Section 4)
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