Open Source 3D Game Engines for Serious Games Modeling

In this chapter we will review some tools and open source Game Engines used for modeling of real scenarios in serious games for training. One of the typical uses of serious games (3D serious games) is specialized training in dangerous tasks or when the training is quite expensive. However, typical games use artificial scenarios, created by artists and created according to the restrictions imposed by the Game engine used. In our experience, some tasks require the use of a real scenario like a city, forest area, etc, and most of this information is available as Digital Terrain Models in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The problem here is that GIS formats are not compatible with 3D formats used in Game engines. Then we have to solve the problem of convert the GIS format to a 3D format supported by the Game Engine. On the other side of the story, there are different Game Engines in the market and different 3D formats both in the commercial world and in the Open Source world. For working with Open source tools, we have to consider tools like Blender and Game Engines like OGRE or JMonkey. Using these tools, we can model real scenarios based on GIS information, but being aware of some important considerations that will be exposed in the following pages. During the writing of this chapter, many of the commercial game engines available have released some free versions, in some cases releasing source code for some applications. This is a very important event, because the users can develop serious games and training games using powerful tools according to specific needs. This chapter focuses in free game engines, which may be closed or open source (the code is provided with the software for modification or extension). In the next pages we will describe some aspects of Serious Games and its importance in this modern time, and then we explain the basics of Open Source Game Engines and the recently released free Game Engines, its characteristics and some basic information about them. After that, we will explain some considerations about the conversion of Digital Terrain Maps in GIS format to 3D models useful for Game Engines. Finally, some conclusions and remarks.