 "NASA To Lease Unreal 3 Engine")
After being licensed by a lot of the developers in the industry, Epic’s Unreal 3 engine is now being leased by an agency of the US government, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), who plan on making a 10-20 minute game by the way.
The general idea is that NASA’s Learning Technologies Office got a small amount of funding to start a prototype NASA-based game. They are now working with the America’s Army development team and the Federation of American Scientists to make a short (10 to 20 minutes) prototype. They are using the Unreal 3 engine from Epic, so they’re hoping for commercial quality results.
_The prototype is expected to be an introduction to NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration — apparently, NASA is planning to head back to the moon by 2020, and by 2035, a human on Mars is planned. The prototype is expected to introduce the vision and give people a chance to appreciate the experience of being on the International Space Station and on the moon — separately, of course.
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Expect highly detailed Martians.
Nash, as he prefers being called, woke up to the wonders of gaming rather late but don't bring that up around him. It's a touchy subject. A self confessed Battlefield veteran, Nash spent a good part of 2010 on the Steam Battlefield - with Bad Company (see what we did there?). He has a zero tolerance policy towards RTS games but is currently showing an interest by picking up and moving people - who he refers to as units - in the office. Thank God he's not that enthusiastic about Angry Birds or we'd be seeing women flying all over the place. Bali... Bali, put the receptionist down now.