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Comment by theseadroid | Hacker News Reader

I wish every game depicting the real world contribute to a common 3D world repository. And maybe allow crowd sourcing that repository too. Imagine what we would get to play in flight simulators or driving simulators with such a repository.

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If you want to drive real circuits or fly across actual countries then real world data would be awesome, but for anything else it probably wouldn't be. Compressed game world environments (eg mountains next to open grass lands next to coastline next to forests within a few miles of each other) are designed that way because that variety contributes to the game being more fun. You don't get that in the real world.

But you could take mountainous area, stretch the height difference and plonk your favourite building/village/city block in the middle of it, then crop the whole thing and stick it in a lake you know, or whatever - seems like fun.

>You don't get that in the real world.

Depends on the country. There are places with "mountains next to open grass lands next to coastline next to forests within a few miles of each other" (where few, eg. 100 miles). The world is not all like Utah US50 or whatever huge expanse.

But even so,

(1) there's something exciting on its own for driving in real-mapped as opposed to some fake designed terrain

(2) for certain games, it can main point (e.g. I can imagine a "route 66 hot rod race" or a "drive Monaco Rally" (and of course things like MS Flight Simulator, combat games, etc)

(3) There's absolutely no reason why a game couldn't use real world data and cherry pick different terrains for variability from those...

(3)

And imagine when some internet forum decides to put a phallic object on top of some significant building, and all go vote it as legitimate. I'm not claiming it's impossible, but there will certainly be obstacles (see wikipedia). This has to be one data-set we get right; with self-driving cars coming, it could cause injury or death if we don't.

Like you said: See Wikipedia.

Right, but Wikipedia still has lots of issues with vandalism. They do a good job, but it's just not accurate to keep something perfect at that scale. Here's the difference: wikipedia gets vandalized and people laugh. Mapping data gets vandalized and people could die.

The world is a dynamic place. People and AI need to be able to reconcile when what they see doesn’t match a map.

Humans are vandals. Humans are murders.

Humans are creators. Humans build things larger than themselves.

Nothing is perfect. Choose what to focus on.

Not really, self-driving cars must never rely on maps to prevent injury.

>This has to be one data-set we get right; with self-driving cars coming, it could cause injury or death if we don't.

Self driving cars can't (and don't) rely on maps to prevent injury or death. They only use to know how to go from A to B in the most general way -- and they'd still need to check for bypasses, closed roads, etc... (on top of the real-time, processing of obstacles, vehicles, lanes, traffic lights, weather, and so on).

I hope so too. There should be a service that allows game developers to just import the real world. On top of that they could then customize specific locations according to the story or gameplay. Especially valuable would be an algorithm that automatically creates interiors (ideally infered from the shape of the building).

MapBox, and I believe a new Unity Map feature, both offer this.

http://terrain.party/

Allows you to fetch real world height data for use in Cities:Skylines (and any other game that uses heightmaps, pretty much).

Flightgear - https://www.flightgear.org/

edit - Can build scenery off of OpenStreetMap data http://wiki.flightgear.org/Osm2city.py

Combined with an LOD filter, this could be useful. Otherwise, not so much.

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