SSI Senior Associate Joe Strout has been working very hard on the High Frontier simulation project for quite some time and following the successful Kickstarter campaign the project has been coming along in solid steps.
Joe just sent us all a couple of screen shots and this information: “DesignMode [shown above] is probably the better one; it shows off some of the parameters that will be of interest to SSI members, and is a more colorful image. But the MainAsteroidBelt image {see the bottom of this page] is a recent one showing off a feature coming in the *next* release, which is building a colony in orbit around an asteroid. Unfortunately it’s a bit dark (hey, the main belt is quite far from the Sun!).”
While there are many recent video games set off-Earth, some even extremely popular (Halo, Doom, Borderlands, Destiny and the upcoming Mass Effect: Andromeda jump immediately to mind) they mostly use the locations simply as backgrounds and the core is the shoot-em-up action – this isn’t a slight against them, mine is a gaming family and I play allof those and more. Other games do offer creative complexity and thoughtful exploration (Such as No Man Sky or Star Citizen – Star Citizen is Ed O’Neill’s passion, btw) but still, it’s not like you are getting the chance to play out the details of O’Neill’s concepts.
Strout’s High Frontier is different.
We hope you’ll head over to his site to check out those details, it’s got a pretty easy url 😉 : http://highfrontier.com
Here’s a YouTube video from Joe’s – Absolutely Excellent – 2015 TedX talk about the project and “The Vision”:
And here’s a link to a recent story about the whole project: http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/11/tedx-talk-making-case-for-orbital-space.html
Nice work Joe, SSI is proud to have you as a Senior Associate and glad to see you putting your heart into the challenge from our founder: “Make something… Make The High Frontier” – Gerard K. O’Neill
High Frontier Simulation Asteroid location
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