Exit the World of Warcraft. Put down the Warhammer. According to Intel, you and your local government or non-governmental organizations can prepare for disasters by simulating them in online, multiplayer environments.
Today at IDF Day Zero, the chipmaker demoed a disaster simulation MMO that allows thousands of online users to play a game where they attempt to find family members during a gas main leak in a fictional city. The game we say today, which Intel programmed using both the OpenSimulator 3D platform and its own Distributed Scene Graph technology, is still in development and may never reach the public in the form we saw, but it shows the strength of simulation technology.
Intel's Michael Bowman explained that by dealing with virtual disasters online, agencies and citizens can identify trouble spots before real calamities appear. Sandia National Labs has been using a version of the game called Water Wars with farmers, politicians, and other policy makers in New Mexico's Rio Grande Valley to simulate water shortages and find solutions to them.
Check out the video below for a brief demo and to hear Bowman explain how the game works.
