Comparative differences between games design and simulation design - Part 1: System 3D Engines

System 3D Engines

Introduction

One thing I have learnt over the last few months, working within different industries that utilise my skills in a different context to how I would normally use them which can be both personally and also frustrating to me but I will talk about that later.

In the next couple of posts, I will be breaking down various parts of the industry differences that utilise my skills but looking at them from both the positives / negatives and how effective the skill transfer is or if there is any significant changes that need to be looked at in the near future.

The 3 main areas of breakdown with comparison that I will be talking about are the following:

• Visual 3D Engine – looking at the engines used and how the engines are used within industries and how they correlate well against each other.
• Environment design – looking at the main functions and set up of environments depending on simulation
• Model design – specifically looking at the process at modelling pipeline comparison

The reason for this is to not only talk about the significant similarities there is within different industries but using overall different tool sets and programs but still going for the end goal of a game / scenario that'll allow the player to effectively learn, adapt and develop set skills for in game or externally depending on the requirements.

Gaming Engines

There are many big significant engines that are used within the industry for 3D games design. The majority work with the use of games design orientates on the use of multiple parts of the engine (as some now have multiple key parts such as cinematic, VR and multiplatform integration). Although gaming engines are commonly known for games design use, gaming engines as a whole are now being utilised within different industries such as implementation of unreal into movies (Animations), Architecture, Training and research. Gaming engines as a whole means more improvements, progress, updates, plugins and processes being implemented which can be a pain but in the long run means improved environments.

Below are selections that are specifically used by big major companies:

Unity

One of the big major engines used within the gaming industry, A vast majority of games are made using this engine. From Escape from tarkov, Furi and subnautica, the games engine is very versatile and setup for multiple language use (more specifically C# coding) but unlike it’s other major competitor in unreal, there is no blueprinting system (visual coding) which means that unity itself is very orientated on the skills and abilities of the dev team in competency of coding team. The other major notice of this engine is the lighting and optimisation which as well relates strongly to the skills of the team as well.

Unity in an overall sense is becoming more versatile with use of architecture (3D environments for promoting a finished environment such as a building or a room) and it’s training uses within different industries to help with the end game of more efficient employees / colleagues.

Cry Engine

Cry Engine (made by Crytek) is a gaming engine that was very popular with specific titles and genres. Although a vast majority of the more well-known games made with this engine came in house (Crysis). It’s known for its superior effects in both ambient environments as well as in its lighting which a lot consider to be one of its major positives against other engine on the market. It lost its popularity when the other more mainstream engines appeared due to its development community being not as extensive and communicative made the engine fall out of favour.

Unreal Engine 4

Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) is one of the powerhouses with Unity that is currently leading the way in innovation, development and mutli industry use. Its constant development and use in industries such as movies and entertainment as well as training puts it as one of the most versatile engines to be used.

The engine as well promotes the use of being designer friendly to both designers and developers with the integration of coding language C++ as well as a visual scripting interface adapted into the development side to allow for a visual noodle development for people who are not as strong in coding as main developers are which is a big push for devs who want a strong introduction engine to work on as well as an overall powerful engine to produce some amazing functionality and games design.

Autodesk Stingray

Autodesk have produced their own engine, although not as popular as other mainstream engines commonly used in the market, the main selling point is the automatic integration and update in real time from 3d modelling to engine use.

Sim Engines

Simulation engines although not dis similar and use the same kind of process, are designed for a different style of environment design presentation.

VR Forces / Vantage

VR-F simulation engine that uses two platform applications to design an overall simulation environment; VR Forces (VRF) is designed to be set as the main tool to design environments, implement forces (Opfor (opposition), BLUFOR (friendlies) and Civilians (neutral)), environment buildings whether it is generated using buildings designed by the user or system generated by the engine using different formatted files to provide the necessary information. As well, the engine utilises speed tree which allows for rendering with the environment as well as the ability to connect via networking to other external systems to allow for mass integration and utilisation.

VR Vantage (VRV) is the way that the user can interact within the system. Although restricted unlike its forces counterpart, what I can do is provide the allowance for in simulation interaction, whether it be for interaction with camera sensors or driving around in a challenger two tank or as a ground base unit, the control set up allows for easy integration with the forces to ensure that the system can provide a realistic scenario environment.

VBS 3

VBS which is supported by BIS (Bohemia interactive Simulations) which is the sister company to Bohemia Interactive who has made the Arma engine which is known and famous for the DayZ mod and Arma games. Although is a separate standalone engine, VBS from research and interaction with the software in practice and development time, it personally feels like a direct copy of the ARMA engine just with a worse looking interface and weird menu controls. (I need to reiterate that this is my interpretation and personal belief on this from practice).

In regards to engine, the engine is quite optimised for what it needs to do, with the breakdown of AI commands, integration of scenario and other systems (like VRF). The main difference however between VRF and VBS is that VBS is a whole project unlike VRF which is separated into two separate packages.

Environment Design

In this section, we’ll be breaking down the core points that I perceive to be the big important parts to each styled engine (Simulation or games designed). This will be looking at the core parts of each simulation engine and games design engine and breaking down their important parts.

Simulation

Loading in environment data via alternative files (shapefiles)

Unlike the traditional setup of environment design seen within games design, environment data can instead be captured and collected and stored into database vertex files which provide shapes as well as data per point within the environment. As an example, say you have 4 key points of a building within an environment, the data of the 4 corners will have key data to help when read by other programs the key information to make an object. It can hold key data such as X,Y,Z location, height data with the overall object holding other information such as type of object, name, elevation which can be converted and given a form when rendered in engine.



Shapefiles themselves are not very size demanding as no visual data is stored but only set vertices information which makes the file sizes much lower in comparison with the added effect of a top down view to see the object if a building from a birds eye view.

Lidar / DTED capture and Effect

LIDAR (which defines as a detection system which works on the principle of radar, but uses light from a laser) creates a database of information of the land to help create terrain mapping named DTED (digital terrain elevation data) which is a matrix system that consists of elevation data and standard in the 1970s to aid in aircraft radar simulations and predictions. In SIM engines, that data can be taken and converted to provide a good background collation of actual data collected for redistribution. This data as well can be quite refined which for realism can ensure that the environment is the more close to real life size as you can get for redistribution.

Asset Storage

One thing that can be seen that is difference between how the assets are help within a games engine and from what I have seen from simulation engines, the setup of a drag, drop and put into the environment is not really applicable. The simulation engines seem to use a different set up whether it’s a specific program that allows you to import and specifically set the assets to how you want them to be or specifically placed within the engine at load up to be allocated to the engine (cannot be imported mid run, has to be installed before engine activation). Although useful with the fact that you can put certain settings on the buildings, the lack of simulation engine real time importing and ten exporting into the actually environment means that the delay of setting an asset list of simulation design takes considerably more time.

If testing, the situation that can be seen especially within the loading of engines for each model means that a long duration of time is wasted to load and test models which would then need to be removed, edited and retested which means long delays than in a game engine which is real time importing and updating when the model has been updated.

Games Design

Terrain Editor

The inbuilt terrain editor in most maps allow for quick creation of environments with tree’s and foliage within a couple of minutes worth of work. The allowance for that quick design of terrain ensures that environments aren’t to be a big hassle.

The interface is quick, easy to work with and with slopes / hills, the terrain changes and edits how the ground looks dependant of the severity of the climb / slope making it as realistic as possible.
Prop Object / Storage Placement

Unlike simulation design, the process of asset control within unreal and other games design specific engines is more orientated about direct integration and response within real time than preloading it previously. The theory of designing the engines to be able to drop in objects like FBX files and then processing them to be ready files for that project means that its easy to work and remove / add whenever instead of having the issue of getting it ready, saving, closing and then reopening when it’s premade.

Interfaces within engines

The useful thing with modern games design engines is the interface design and GUI layout for working within engines. Through the above engines (UE4, Unity etc) to other undiscussed engines, they layout is majorly the same in both the controls and layout., which for a designer is incredibly useful as it allows for the quick swapping and confidence to carry forward and implement what is needed.

Evaluation Summary

Best way to compare it from what has been seen and what has been presented to me (this means it’s how it’s perceived and interpreted contextually from what I had evidenced) is that of cheese and processed cheese.

We know that cheese has a process that makes it what it is which takes time to develop, form and in some cases mature over a duration but it means putting in effort and constant attention at specific points, this is what I interpret as games design engines as it allows for good quality products but when you put constant attention to the product through the process but it will take a lot of time to get a decent product.

In relation to this, American cheese is quick, easy to make, close to the real thing as it can but not fully the final product but it will do what is needed to be done with lots of alterations to make it useful for the end goal which I perceive to be SIM engines.

Although it sounds like I am bashing on SIM engines, In retrospect, the end idea is to be saying that game engines are designed and now operated to be used in multiple industries whilst SIM engines, (although sort of using the same engine) are more specific to certain uses like the ministry of defence (MOD) for scenario use to design and produce simulations for the end goal of training and development.

Although there are correlations between the two styles of software should mean they can if needed do what each of the other software engines do but not as complicated. That said, like my description of cheese earlier, it’s not really worth it. Breaking down the interface and environment design, the process would be better for game engines to be easier to adapt to working with mass simulation that the alternative due to its open ability to code in what is needed with a bit of effort. Although it would be interesting to see if I can pick up and integrate a shapefile into unreal and see if it can pick up the data to be used which possibly could mean working with shapefiles for data holding than in engine which could be a big positive but overall, the restrictions felt within the environment system on sims and the lack of ability to make close to realistic like within game engines presents no appeal to me.

The vast majority of different engines that can be picked up and played with, each with their own support and forum based in regards to testing and development in games engines to sim engines also strengthens the ability for users to interact with themselves instead of relying to the developers to work in relation to you also makes it more versatile to make fixes, learn and adapt the engine dependant of what is wanted to be learnt. From looking at the sim engines, other than the user guides, there is no form of support other than contact and from personal experience, the delay for a response can be aggravating as you’re then stuck in between a rock and a hard place in what you can then do and can’t which can be horrible when you’re time restricted.

Overall, it’s interesting to learn what the SIM engines can do, that said personally, I hope there are more versatile engines for simulation in the future that are not so reliant and have more of the game engine aspects of real time importing and user interfaces as it’ll help designers adapt so much easier than it is already.