Help Wanted to Develop Mars Colony Simulator

by Alex Kirk ‹ last modified 2009-01-05 14:00

The developer of a 3D Mars simulation environment is seeking volunteers from the space advocacy community to test and refine their Mars-Direct based prototype, named Mars Colony Simulator.

Sample screenshot from Mars Colony Simulator.

Here is the full text of the request: "My name is Howard Dortch. I own a small game development company in southern Ohio called HyperKat Games and I teach Games Design at Shawnee State University. I have developed a Mars Colony Simulator using a 3D game engine that allows the user to freely walk around on the landscape and inside of buildings. The program operates much like a video game and offers the user a first person view of the action. This simulator is based on the Mars Direct proposal by Robert Zubrin and David Baker. There is an MDRS type habitation unit I call the COHAB (Command and Habitation) unit and an Earth Return Vehicle that you must fuel up and launch to end the mission. This concept mission puts the users on Mars and offers the challenge of survival for a first manned mission.

The software is in a pre release form and we would like to invite a few professionals to test with us. The software can support 4 people in a single mission and I would like at least 2 of them to be from the general Mars enthusiast community for this next test. Please email me hdortch@... if you are interested. There is more information about this simulator along with some screenshots on the HyperKat website.

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