Earth and Planetary System Science Game Engine

Abstract

The widespread use of on-line computer games makes this medium a valuable vehicle for information sharing, while scalability facilitates global collaboration between players in the game space. Game engines generally provide an intuitive interface allowing attention to be shifted to the understanding of scientific elements rather than hiding them between a wealth of menus and other counterintuitive user interfaces. These strengths are applied towards promoting the understanding of planetary systems and climate change. Unconventional interaction and visualization techniques are introduced as a method to experience geophysical environments. Players are provided with dynamic visualization assets, which enable them to discover, interrogate and correlate scientific data in the game space. The spirit of exploration is to give players the impetus to conceptualize how complex Earth and planetary systems work, understand their intrinsic beauty and the impact of humans, while providing a sense of responsibility for those systems.

The original online version of this paper can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11736639_64.