richie2000's Journal: JFK.WAD

So I had read the Scientific JFK Assasination site and was all content with LHO as the lone gunman when that pesky Altman photo showed up again. With Lee Harvey Bloody Oswald standing in the doorway of the bottom floor of the Texas School Book Suppository at the same time as JFK is choking to death on a pretzel. No wait, wrong prez.

Anyway, it occured to me - in one of those rare absolutely crystal moments you get just before you fall asleep - that it should now be perfectly possible to re-create and simulate Dealey Plaza using one of the commonly available 3D game engines around - Source and the new fancy Doom3 one comes to mind. Put all of the people in there (there are enough photos and info available to account for every man, woman, child and alien killerbot in that square that fateful day - we can even add E Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis for the conspiracy buffs). Put a Mannlicher-Carcano on a box near a window and press play. Take a shot. Hell, be my guest. Take three shots. Make the bullets leave a trace in the air and stop the action after the third shot. Is it magic? Did the Governor's hand line up with JFK's throat? Did his head jerk backwards or forwards? Try it out for yourself.

Go ahead. Make the mod.

Take the shot.

Back and to the left.

Ah, the memories...

[BandwidthHog]

At a previous job, we used WorldCraft to build HL2 maps that acted as a walkthrough GUI to tie together multiple simulators. My learning project was mapping our office. That was a blast. It was way too small for a deathmatch, but it was still fun to run through it with a crowbar smashing monitors, then throw a few grenades down the stairs.

Good times.

The only question is

[freejung]

how realistic can you get the physics?

Re:The only question is

[richie2000]

That's what tripped my idea in the first place. Apparently, the programmers of the new round of game engines have incorporated lots of real physics in them to make bullets, bodies and grenades fly accurately, to make targets react to impacts in a way consistent with reality and so on. There have been renderings of the scene before and even a few animations, but AFAIK no publically available scenes with reasonably acurate physics and the ability to script accurate movement of all the key players. What may be