The one I’ve had in my head for a while is a “Factory” simulator. Like, think Factorio or Satisfactory, but grounded in reality, instead of on an alien planet. You own a factory and take contracts to produce stuff, and have employees that run everything. Occasionally, you’d actually need to tear down and re-tool chunks of your factory to accommodate new production. Initially, you contract-out raw materials, but maybe, eventually, you source and process them yourself.
I’m a kitchen designer and use an app called 2020 design to do cabinet layouts.
Thing is, we’ve got 3D models of every single cabinet we sell, plus a lot of name brand appliances.
It would be fun, for this factory game, to use real machinery from real companies. It would be a pretty massive undertaking to simulate all those machines, but existing CAD models could be a start.
I imagine there’d be IP stuff to worry about. Like, you and me probably think it’s just a box with a door on it, but the company that designed it sure won’t…
But I’ve thought myself that if you mashed up CAD files for various widgets with a UI made by a good game designer, you could have some extraordinarily useful business apps that are a hundred percent better than what’s usually on the market. I can think of multiple games with base-building in them that are easier to use than business apps that honestly do very similar things.
I have to imagine there’s probably some market forces at work that prevent this from happening.
Semi-related, but I read somewhere that there’s some military equipment out there that uses a video game controller b/c that was easiest to train young recruits on since most already were quite familiar with it.
The one I’ve had in my head for a while is a “Factory” simulator. Like, think Factorio or Satisfactory, but grounded in reality, instead of on an alien planet. You own a factory and take contracts to produce stuff, and have employees that run everything. Occasionally, you’d actually need to tear down and re-tool chunks of your factory to accommodate new production. Initially, you contract-out raw materials, but maybe, eventually, you source and process them yourself.
There’s a game called Automation that covers some of these aspects.
I’m a kitchen designer and use an app called 2020 design to do cabinet layouts.
Thing is, we’ve got 3D models of every single cabinet we sell, plus a lot of name brand appliances.
It would be fun, for this factory game, to use real machinery from real companies. It would be a pretty massive undertaking to simulate all those machines, but existing CAD models could be a start.
I imagine there’d be IP stuff to worry about. Like, you and me probably think it’s just a box with a door on it, but the company that designed it sure won’t…
But I’ve thought myself that if you mashed up CAD files for various widgets with a UI made by a good game designer, you could have some extraordinarily useful business apps that are a hundred percent better than what’s usually on the market. I can think of multiple games with base-building in them that are easier to use than business apps that honestly do very similar things.
I have to imagine there’s probably some market forces at work that prevent this from happening.
One thing I sorely want in 2020 is the ability to navigate the space using regular game controls. WASD plus mouse to look.
Instead you use roughly the same controls you would to navigate the source CAD plans and elevations, to navigate the 3D rendered space.
Semi-related, but I read somewhere that there’s some military equipment out there that uses a video game controller b/c that was easiest to train young recruits on since most already were quite familiar with it.
Definitely don’t play eve online