3D CONVERGENCE - GEOLOGY, GAMES, AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Geological Survey Organizations and academic researchers are increasingly producing 3D geological models as deliverables, replacing 2D maps and GIS data layers. With the ubiquity of gaming hardware and the skills to navigate and interact with complex and dynamic 3D environments that comes from playing modern immersive games, a convergence between 3D geoinformation and game methods and tools is inevitable. While this convergence has been on the horizon for a number of years, it is the recent emergence of games where editing the environment during play, and of tools where simple to complex 3D games can be built from scratch, that has bootstrapped the skills and perspective of many members of the public and enabled a shift in how we deliver products. The British Geological Survey has recently converted several 3D geological models into Minecraft, a hugely popular video game which features voxel-based world editing and is increasingly used in schools as a way to align student interests with curriculum. The models include topographic and elevation data from the Ordnance Survey and show the geology in coloured glass blocks, using William Smith’s original colour scheme. We present experiences and feedback from this work. Realizing that the visual capacity of game engines and physical modeling within them are at least as sophisticated as many tools used in geological engineering research, researchers at Queen’s University are attempting to use game engine construction tools to build new software tools for modeling rockfalls, leveraging the very large amount of work done by the developers of game engines to produce realistic physical simulation - albeit to make things blow up nicely! In fairly short order the geoscience community should be able to produce complex geological models within game engines that simulate geological processes at a range of timescales and using modes of interaction that essentially all young members of the public - and perhaps a few older ones - find intuitive. Given the highly original outcomes of students playing with Minecraft and other game environments we expect the results coming back from the community will be both inspiring and foster new ways to think and act about our relationship with the environment.