Hi, I have a general question to the perspectives and application of Unity Simulation.
Would I as a city planner be able to use Unity Software to design an environment or a copy of a real-life city and simulate certain environmental scenarios (for instance rising sea levels) to understand the potential impact of these scenarios?
I assume it requires some data on the scenario. I was thinking one for instance could use the snow-algorithm from Frozen and thereby simulating the impact of an avalanche on a certain city infrastructure.
Would it be feasible/possible to get some useful data? If so the optionalities are huge because one would be able to analyze different infrastructures and initiatives such as coastal protection or storm surge protection.
As far as I’m concerned my workplace (a medium sized municipality in Denmark) do not have such data lying around nor any software that is able to analyze the various effects of different constructions of storm surge protection.
Yes is able, but you will need to implement parts yourself. Unity is for creating solutions, its not an out-of-the-box solution for this sort of things.
Unity would be great at visualizing rising sea levels. You would need to import elevation and models from something like Google Earth or a GIS data source and you could simply raise a plane to show rough sea level changes.
In terms of analyzing various flood control solutions and their impact, that to me sounds like specialy software that needs to import data from a variety of sources. Theoretically could be done in Unity, but would be beyond the scope of a single person to implement.
Just as an example of the complexity involved, I once imported elevation data (DEM’s) from the USGS to build a model. Each source of data is from a satelite that has a unique orbit. That means the data is distorted based on its relative angle to your subject. For example you may see the east or west side of a building in the data. To get an accurate elevation one had to compensate based on the satelite’s orbit. You can’t just get elevation data from one satelite and layer photography or vegetation on top of it, things won’t line up.
GIS programs know all this and allow layering from a variety of sources in a coherent way.
Unity is an open sandbox you can use for a variety of simulation applications, but you’ll need to import or create all the data and everything you’d want to simulate. You’ll need custom systems for running more detailed simulations.
For example, on an avalanche, you might think since Unity has a built in physics engine that you can just use that. I doubt it, because Unity’s physics system is geared more towards speed than being precise, and probably won’t work that great for simulating the physics of something which has properties both of a solid object and a fluid such as an avalanche.
True! What I meant by ‘visualize’ would be for a meeting where you might want to show the public the general effects of sea level rise if we don’t do something about global warming.
The OP seemed to want to use Unity to evaluate actual solutions. To me, that’s beyond the scope of a game engine and more about data analysis using specialized programs designed to do that.
I think the correct experiment would be to fill a glass of water until it’s full. Place it next to a table filled with ice, angled to go into the glass as it melts. Will it overflow? Yes. I believe the average depth of ice on Greenland is more than a mile deep, so that’s where the concern is, not from ice forming on the oceans and melting.