The Speculist

After writing my Stellar Cartography post the other day, I was thinking how great it would be to tour the local stars with photorealistic virtual reality - something that could be updated regularly with newly discovered exoplanets.

Fun, but not as fun as a game would be. Give each player a spaceship and let them go out and set up competing colonies, be pirates, join forces, or whatever - all within the context of a realistic model of the local galaxy. It wasn't five minutes later that I got an email from Kent Peterson:

...anybody who's played Frontier or First Encounters (available for free here - make sure you get JJFFE as well if trying First Encounters) will of necessity learn much about the stars near Sol. (Of course there are lots of entirely fictional ones too, but everything within a certain radius of Sol is exactly right) I've spent a LOT of time in Antares, Delta Pavonis, Ross 128, and others - even just doing the Barnard's Star - Sol trade run. I haven't touched the game for a while, but when I'm in the mood and have been playing a bit, I can rattle off the distances in lightyears between any two stars anywhere within 20-30 LY of Sol.

Very cool. I would bet that most professional astronomers couldn't do that. If you want to get to know a neighborhood, nothing beats going there and driving around. A ten-year-old buggy game isn't quite the updatable VR I imagined, but I have no doubt that it's a great steller cartography tutorial. Then, I got this comment from Karl Hallowell:

I see that your primitive culture has finally discovered 3D star maps. You might find this technology useful.

I'm really beginning to think Karl's not from around here. But do check out the 3D star map he linked to. It has 3-axis rotation - very nice.

Back to the game idea... is anyone aware of a game written since the 90's that realistically models the local galaxy? I've been a bit too hung up on various versions of Age of Empires to keep up with the space genre.

In Steven Johnson's recent book Everything Bad is Good for You the author argues that rising IQ scores over recent years are being caused by the increasing complexity of modern entertainment - including video games. NPR discussed with Johnnson the power of video games (and television shows like The Sopranos) to challenge us mentally.