Last week, I wrote about MellaniuM’s use of the Unreal engine in architectural visualization. Yesterday, the American Insitute of Architect’s newsletter AIArchitect covers another story about virtual worlds, this time about HKS‘s decision to license the most recent release of the same engine – Unreal Engine 3, by Epic Games Inc. Read the whole story here: http://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek09/0306/0306p_hks.cfm
It seems we have 2 vectors emerging. On the one hand we have a kind of grassroots utilization of free virtual world platforms like Second Life and opensim that are leading with affordances for user-generated-content (UGC). On the other end of the spectrum, we have high-end platforms like HKS’s ARCHengine that are off the charts in expense and complexity. What both vectors share in common is a ‘Do It Yourself’ (DIY) approach to design visualization. Imagine it, architects spending 6 or7 digit figures to license a video game engine…
Speaking of DIY and UGC, I’ve been wondering lately… Is Second Life to architecture what blogs are to publishing?
