Slashgeo

A nice intersection between science and gaming, Civilization IV fanatics recently generated NASA's Blue Marble Terrain for Civilization IV. Interesting to see Remote Sensing data making its way to various strange places. From the website: "The graphics installer is accompanied by a small scaling tool, making it possible to adjust the dimensions of many 3D objects and the strength of clouds. You are free to distribute, install and use this software for non-commercial purposes as long as it is kept 100% free of charge and unmodified in any way."

GeoPlace host an article linking game platforms and geospatial technologies. From the article: "It's obvious that geospatial technologies can contribute greatly to achieving more realistic environments, with ancillary benefits for society if these worlds model reality rather than imaginary environments. [...] The needs of game developers are starting to closely match the needs of geospatial technology practitioners. The key is to gain from the other's experience, rather than continuing on a parallel development path."

Slashdot discuss a Google Maps RTS game (the game site is slashdotted right now). Their summary: "Play the first Google Maps RTS! Online players (2-25) randomly receive a set of countries with troop hitpoints based on real world population data. To play: attack neutral and enemy countries in an effort to try to take over the world. You have a 20% chance of receiving more troops when you overtake an enemy country. More features to come! (currently in public beta status)." From the comments, we find those this other Google Maps CyberNations game and a list of games using Google Maps.

Both Vector One and Spatial Sustain discuss this week what is the influence of gaming on geotechnology. From V1: "In fact, it can be argued that as GIS and geotechnology contribute real-world spatial data into the modeling and gaming environment – games becoming more reality based. [...] Gaming is shifting science to entertainment – make no mistake, some serious science is embedded into gaming development, tools and products. The shift that is taking place is more subtle, causing science to be fun and the pursuit of knowledge and discovery (key ingredients of science) to be entertaining." From SS: "Microsoft’s Virtual Earth technology is being married to their Flight Simulator software program to provide greater realism at multiple scales so that those piloting simulated aircraft have a more realistic experience from the cockpit. [...] We are in need of greater realism, and the expanded demand of the gaming community means that there is a revenue stream to pay for the collection of more detailed and realistic models. The geospatial community is in need of more interdisciplinary interaction, and the creation of more collaborative gaming platforms could help pave the way for more interactive simulation environments that could be harnessed to understand earth systems." I copied below a few geospatial games mentioned previously, yes, there's *a lot of them* (and much more that probably weren't shared on Slashgeo).

Chris Spagnuolo's GeoScrum blog has a very nice game for the GIS professional on it. It written completely in flash and is very fun to play. It involves being given a random location on the earth, and few seconds to click that location on the map. Give it a go and post your scores here so the rest of the GeoCommunity can make fun of your low scores :). Update: 04/10 13:59 GMT by S : This game was mentioned before on Slashgeo previously. I also copied some other previous geo-games below. And since many shared their score, here's mine: 527,701 pts, Level: 12, Trav. IQ: 127 (I admit this score was not done on my first try, but I haven't played often ;-). Update #2: Thanks to Marc K. for the submission of the same story prior the publishing of this one (yours has been pending too long in our system - thanks for your efforts).