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« Quote of the day | Main | links for 2006-04-28 »

April 28, 2006

Sim City, aka Cad Land

One of the largest future market opportunities for very low-cost 3D printers is children. They love to create objects, and they, their parents, and their schools will buy them in large quantities. Consider the past. Many of us grew up playing with Tinkertoys, Creepy Crawlers, Incredible Eatables, Play Dough, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, and Lego bricks. All of them are about creating three-dimensional objects.

Today's kids are producing 3D objects on computers. Consider SIMS (a.k.a., SimCity), the most popular computer game in the world. The buildings, furnishings, and surroundings are fully described as 3D models.

(Terry Wohlers)

It had never occurred to me to think of massive multiplayer game spaces as breeding-grounds for design and engineering skill; but maybe 20 years from now there'll be a generation of kids for whom virtual world-building and rapid prototyping are as natural a combination as word processing and printing were for mine-- or rather, the cohort that came about 3 years after me.

More on this at End of Cyberspace.

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Comments

Yes, I used to work for blizzard and youd be surprised how many of the terrain and map designers also know CAD, PPGK and others...

On second thought, I should just respond as follows!

=)
Anthony F
HVACDetails.com

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