Sim Ideas.

[swestrup]

I have posted a number of journal entries on the need for, and the profit potential in, an open-source clone of the sims. A week or so ago, I suddenly thought up another couple of uses for such a simulator:

1. House design finalization. One thing that has struck me as I've been watching various shows on Home-and-Garden TV, is just how many decisions the clients need to make when they contract to have a house built. Materials, colors, textures, styles in endless combinations have to be sorted through and worked out. Not only that, the various choices need to be verified, ordered and correctly installed when they arrive. Because of the complexity of this task, and the difficulty of imagining what color to paint a theoretical cabinet in a kitchen that doesn't yet exist, most folks having a house built have to make the decisions piece-meal as the work is done. This usually introduces all sorts of delays as work stops for a decision to be made, and the chosen materials to be purchased and delivered. If, instead, one had a virtual walk through program run by a technician and a facilitator, then the various options could be presented to a client in their final settings, long before work had begun on the house. This would free up the contractor, and would provide an itemized list of materials and purchase orders accompanied by notes on where to install things in the house. This would greatly speed things up.
2. On a more modest scale, an interior designer might want to design virtual rooms based on measurements of a real room, and present them to a client for approval. More radically, a designer may want to release object templates that contained a virtual design for an abstract living room, and sell them the same way we plan to let clothing designers sell virtual clothing for the sims.