14 ms·

Computer Modeling Should Become a Popular Hobby

160 points by kercker 8y ago

diydsp 8y ago
Recommend adding (1996) to title. That doesn't take away from it, it just shows how prescient the thought was.
- folli 8y ago
  It also explains why all the links are dead
- Animats 8y ago
  Yes. It goes further back than that. That's what Alan Kay thought Smalltalk should be for. Read "Personal Dynamic Media". Going forward, there are the persistent shared modifiable virtual worlds, from There to Second Life to SineSpace and beyond. There are many good 3D CAD systems now, and the pro ones have some simulation capability. There's Minecraft and its imitators. We have the capability, and sizable numbers of users. It's not mainstream, but it's in wide use.
  - PinkMilkshake 8y ago
    Alan Kay (and others) developed a 3D collaborative world in Smalltalk called Croquet [1]. Definitely one of the most interesting virtual worlds I've come across. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project
  - jonsen 8y ago
    It goes further back than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simula
- antfarm 8y ago
  Around 1996 was the hayday of Artificial Life and Complex Adaptive Systems research and (agent-based) computer simulation of living systems, including ecological, social and economical, was a very common topic in popular science publications.
- rchaud 8y ago
  Yeah, when the page first loaded, I thought somebody actually took "motherfuckingwebsite.com" seriously and built a raw HTML page with no margins or padding beyond the browser defaults.
wmf 8y ago
Tangentially related: if anyone (or their kids) is bored with voxels, try Astroneer; it's more like virtual clay. https://astroneer.space/ https://astroneer.space/
- petermcneeley 8y ago
  But if you cant build a quad core CPU inside the game then whats the point? https://youtu.be/SPaI5BJxs5M https://youtu.be/SPaI5BJxs5M
platz 8y ago
> The fog surrounding economic projections, and the other uses and abuses of statistical evidence in politics, might lift at least a little. The perpetual historical failure of academic economic modelers is a counterexample to this line of thinking; to think non-academically trained folks would fare better is laughable
- trentlott 8y ago
  I mean, this was the essential point that brought about chaos theory, right? Rounding wind speeds down at the force of a butterfly flap caused significant deviations for known weather patterns. Having people half-ass assumptions because they read about a supply/demand curve once and can scrap DJIA data in order to gamble their 15k savings is unlikely to be widespread, but definitely something to consider if that is your argument. However, it would still least breed familiarity. I take your point that this will probably not help things and...well, I guess I've run out of steam in my own comment. Ignorance is bad, and staying in ivory towers will end badly. The obvious route for education will likely only foster arrogance and cynicism. What's the third way? Make everyone read Kant and write "Marx was a philosopher, not an economist" 100 times?
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  It might be good for thinking critically however. That could result in a technical truth - if nobody is fooled by models then they won't be used to deceive. If everyone can pick out and point to what is missed or inappropriate models it could and emerging absurdities. I suspect in that regards it is more a way to teach critical thinking. The informality could be a boon - less reason to stick to the rules of tenure knifefighting.
aaron695 8y ago
Like the Goat Simulator? Seems like we are there?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
Well I definitely spend most of my hobby time modeling 3D printed robots!
llamataboot 8y ago
I'd love to see more "gamey" and fun platforms for agent-based modeling (Sims, but with different types of goals to tweak!) and something for system dynamics modeling. There's been a few runs at both, but for how poor human brains are at intuiting things about non-linear systems, and how desperately we need to understand them, more things in this area would be great!
- troquerre 8y ago
  Factorio is a great game that teaches system dynamics without having that as an explicit goal
ssivark 8y ago
Agree broadly with everything in the article. However, I have one point to add: > Physical models that reproduce behavior are limited by the physics of the world, while computer models have much looser bounds. This is also one of the weak points of computer modeling. The outputs are strongly influenced by modeling assumptions, and without feedback from reality, one can easily be deluded towards wrong models. The computer simulation encodes the map not the territory. This is particularly true in hard to model fields like economics & finance. As long as one appreciates that, computer modeling is a powerful tool. Regarding what would make modeling more accessible to computer users, I think the answer is an environment where users have access to the full live system (few boundaries) and can tweak it in real-time, with right feedback loops. Eg: Smalltalk, Lisp.
- btown 8y ago
  "All models are wrong, but some are useful" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong
  - AllegedAlec 8y ago
    I like how Paulien Hogeweg phrased it too: "thinking in the most interesting simplification" [0] I always thought the 'but models are wrong' is quite a weak excuse. Newtonian physics is a wrong model of how the universe works. Using it though; we put a man on the moon. Einsteinian physics are incomplete, but it allows us to use satellites moving at roughly 10KM/s to pinpoint our location to within a few metres. A model's usefulness is not about how accurately it describes what is happening, but about whether it describes what happens at a certain meso-scale accurately. [0]: http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/issues/lt2011/lt07/lt_2011_07_26_29.pdf http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/issues/lt2011/lt07/lt_2011_...
    - phkahler 8y ago
      >> Einsteinian physics are incomplete, but it allows us to use satellites moving at roughly 10KM/s to pinpoint our location to within a few metres. Funny. I know how GPS works and that knowing the SAT locations is critical, but I never thought about how fast they are moving. They need to transmit their own position and time with great accuracy. In particular, don't they have to transmit their time and position at the time of transmission? That is a more interesting problem than I realized.
zokier 8y ago
It is a shame that the field is pretty undeveloped still after 20 years. Only recently there have been popping up few consumer CADs (fusion360/onshape), but those are still quite limited and of course do not satisfy free software user like me. Setting up decent physical simulations seems yet another whole endeavor even if you got your model done. There are few physics engines available, but using them seems to require fair amount of work even just for basics. Then comes the social sharong aspect that the article mentions as "Shared federated simulation environments". While I don't think that we need such fully immersive shared environment that the author envisioned, just being able to share models and simulations for exploration on the web would be nice. Being able to get nice photographic-like visualizations would be then the cherry on top this whole thing.
- mojomark 8y ago
  >>(fusion360/onshape), but those are still quite limited and of course do not satisfy free software user like me. Fusion360 is free (1). I used it for a while; though I didn't get into all of the features so I didn't really explore the physical simulation capabilities in depth, but I know it's supported to a degree (2). I'd imagine the FEA engine isn't as rigorous as paid software like say, Autodesk Inventor or Solidworks. As someone who does a fair amount of 3D modeling, I've always thought sketchup was on the right track. It's also available in a free version of course, and the 3D warehouse has a ton of pre-made models in it that I use all the time. From my experience, I would say the community-built sketchup plug-ins available are decent, but definitely hit-or-miss. I've never found a good (i.e. non-buggy and well-supported) 'physical simulation' plug-in for sketchup, but I haven't checked the plugin store in a while. That, and some plugins require sketchup pro, which isn't free. In the free software domain, I'd say basic Sketchup is good for quick mock-ups, whereas Fusion 360 can be used for higher precision modeling. 1. https://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/fusion-360-for-hobbyists https://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/fusion-360-for-hobbyists 2. https://www.udemy.com/fea-simulations-with-fusion-360-static-structural-focus/ https://www.udemy.com/fea-simulations-with-fusion-360-static...
  - zokier 8y ago
    > Fusion360 is free (1) I do enjoy the occasional beer, but it is no substitute for liberty; that path would only lead to alcoholism
Quequau 8y ago
Years ago I read "Growing Artificial Societies - Social Science from the Bottom Up" by Joshua M. Epstein and Robert L. Axtell and was really motivated to do computer modeling as some sort of hobby. For me at least the problem was once I got their original model up and running I wasn't able to sustain the focus to construct a graphical representation that was compelling. So I never went back and debugged the stuff that I added to model (not seriously anyway).
- Quequau 8y ago
  lol and that comment just trigger an old google alert I have running on this topic.
meheleventyone 8y ago
I think it has, just not in the way the author intends here. This article was basically written on the cusp of the game modding scene really taking off online, followed by the indie game revolution of the early 2000's into what we see today as a glut of games being released. The popular computer modeling pastime is game development and exhibits much of what is talked about in the article.
Theodores 8y ago
VRML became really good a couple of years after this with SGI's CosmoWorlds. I built some incredible things with it, with my actual sister as if we had gone back to childhood with the LEGO bricks out. In fact my sister's well paid career is entirely due to how impressive the VRML that fitted on a floppy disk was. Funny to think that you also applied for jobs by post back then. Admittedly the texture rendering was not up to modern gaming standards but everything worked and existed on a beautiful imaginative plane - much like how a little bit of imagination is needed with LEGO. But then we realised nobody else was on the trail. Our models were far in advance of anything published online. Only the SGI demos were cooler than what we had come up with. Then there weren't many of those beyond the demo disk that came with new SGI machines (and needed the power of an SGI machine). The tools - Cosmoworlds - were fantastic and not hard. I particularly liked the audio aspect, being able to have different music play in a scene and for the stereo to move around as you explored a scene. If I was a musician then I would have wanted my album played that way. But no musician thought to put their traxxx in a 3D virtual world, online for the world to hear. They had distribution in those days so the required VRML viewer could have been distributed on CD to solve the problem of that ten minute download over dial up. 3D then became the cottage industry that it remained, only done in games companies or by specialists doing things like oil exploration, CAD or other things like TV adverts. Despite the wonders of CosmoWorlds it never became this accessible thing that people wanted to play with in a Lego like way. After my sister and myself pushed VRML so far my sister ended up working in a world where the interactive exhibits she was to be building for one of the world's greatest museums would only ever be flat and two dimensional. The portfolio of awesome interactivity that got her the job never made it past the bureaucracy, committees and bullshit of the regular world. It was a glimpse of a future that was never going to happen, a high note of creativity to never be reached again. We downsize our dreams, from 3+ dimensions to 2. The problem wasn't us or SGI's CosmoWorlds. It was everyone else. We are not that adventurous as a species. On a given day the finest mountain tops with the most awesome views only have a small amount of people there, not seven billion people. Even though getting there needs no more effort than putting one foot in front of the other for half the day.
Joakal 8y ago
For those that are developers/programmers, you might like OpenSCAD where models are generated from code. I prefer it over knowing where/when to use menu items. As a bonus, the exports work with 3D printers. Source: Printed parts of a hand as a hobby.
- lkschubert8 8y ago
  I absolutely love the idea of OpenSCAD, but it's speed is extremely painful, even for things that are geometric. As soon as you start trying to make something more organic it crawls.
vinceguidry 8y ago
I wonder if there's not a more basic reason for the observations of the author. When I code as a hobby, my main goal is to make sure that no effort is wasted. I get precious little free time to hobby code as it is, so every minute spent in front of a text editor that's not driving forward to the desired goal feels almost physically painful. The last thing I want to do in my off time is fiddle endlessly with all the endless layers of friction. To hobby is to demand instant gratification. The land of hobby seems to want to be connected to the land of research. But research is only truly useful when the desire for instant gratification can be dispelled. If I'm reading the author correctly, computer modeling might be that magical land where hobby and research can commingle. Where instant gratification can produce tangible research results. I'm not convinced. Is it really a matter of tooling? Because it seems to me that any kind of modeling that would actually have research potential is going to have to be invented. So now my hobby involves research and invention? Maybe after I retire.
- logram 8y ago
  Hopefully I didn't misunderstand what you meant, but I'd argue that a hobby is exactly not instant gratification. That I would call entertainment. In my opinion the gratification of a hobby comes from enjoyment of the process itself. For example, if you play music, drilling through the same couple of measures until it sounds right might not pay off until the end, which might take hours and hours of work across many days. If you don't enjoy the process then you won't take it up as a hobby, but that doesn't mean there is constant gratification. Even more, the end result might not be as good as a professional product -- but it's yours and it's the journey that counts. I say that instant gratification is entertainment because I would compare that to playing games or watching a movie. There's no process there, it's just gratification. An example would be the people that make emulators as a hobby. Across their journey they find so many special cases and undocumented behaviour that it is certainly a lot of work riddled with unexpected obstacles. But exactly that is the process of problem solving and ultimately what they enjoy.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    Music is a great example. I used to play guitar, I don't now because the time investment needed to get to fulfillment is too heavy. I can pick up a guitar and noodle around with it, but the impetus to take it seriously as a hobby is just no longer there, because of all the perceived friction. Of course, if I'd taken it seriously as a kid, I wouldn't have that friction and I could count the guitar among my regular hobbies. I don't have that same attitude towards the keyboard, which requires far less finger dexterity and thus practice. I'll probably never pick up a guitar for more than a few minutes ever again, but I can see myself buying a keyboard and stand and going at a piece of music for ten minutes or so every day. (it's a bit of a contrived example, the real reason I don't play my guitars at the moment is because I don't like what it does to my fingers.) This is what I mean by instant gratification. Everybody draws their line differently, but it's hard to argue that the line doesn't or shouldn't exist. A hobby is what you spend your excess time and money on without expecting a financial return from it. Having an impact is fine, but commerce it isn't, otherwise you call it a side project.
moron4hire 8y ago
Definitely needs a "(1996)" on the title.
CupOfJava 8y ago
I want to model my home in 3D, with measurements. What's a good free alternative to autocad for that?
- trentlott 8y ago
  Blender allows for the use of human units. It also contains engines for physics and lots of videos explaining how to do interesting things, including allowing for Python scripting Choosing a very popular free platform has benefits (blender.org)
- LeonM 8y ago
  Sketchup [0] has a free version for personal use [0] https://www.sketchup.com/ https://www.sketchup.com/
- Sileni 8y ago
  Doesn't have all the functionality that AutoCAD does, and there are some usability issues if you're really comfortable in AutoCAD already, but I imagine FreeCAD [0] would work well for your use case. [0]: https://www.freecadweb.org/ https://www.freecadweb.org/
  - acidburnNSA 8y ago
    I'm particular the BIM workbench is looking pretty slick these days [1] [1] https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/BIM_Workbench https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/BIM_Workbench
- sanbor 8y ago
  SweetHome3d is what you're looking for: http://www.sweethome3d.com/ http://www.sweethome3d.com/
dkuebric 8y ago
Seems like the author was right; I'd look to Minecraft as the analogue for model trains.
anonlastname 8y ago
Many games have a modding community. A lot of these mods are usually suprisingly detailed model packs.
sevensor 8y ago
I've had a lot of fun with agent-based and discrete event simulations. Hook it up to a visual and it's basically a game. Writing a basic simulation engine is also a lot of fun. Simulation is also the only application where I've felt comfortable with classical object-oriented modeling. I always find that object oriented programming forces me to deal with a lot of emergent complexity, but when you're doing simulation modeling, emergent complexity is the whole point.
- gglitch 8y ago
  Sounds awesome. Can you say more? What languages or environments, what kinds of things you're modeling, other writeups?
  - sevensor 8y ago
    NetLogo is fun for toy agent-based simulation models. It includes visuals. For discrete event simulation, I recommend SimPy. If you like animations and you're willing to trade some personal info for free stuff, Simio has a free version that supports mixing discrete event and agent based simulation. Edit: I realize I only answered about half of your question. I was in grad school when I did simulation modeling, this was about 5 years ago. I was working on modeling industrial processes. Simulation is great in that context because at a certain point queueing theory breaks down. I can't tell you how many talks I sat through that derived exciting conclusions from the assumption that all arrival processes are Markovian.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

160 points by kercker 8y ago

diydsp 8y ago

Recommend adding (1996) to title. That doesn't take away from it, it just shows how prescient the thought was.

folli 8y ago
It also explains why all the links are dead
Animats 8y ago
Yes. It goes further back than that. That's what Alan Kay thought Smalltalk should be for. Read "Personal Dynamic Media". Going forward, there are the persistent shared modifiable virtual worlds, from There to Second Life to SineSpace and beyond. There are many good 3D CAD systems now, and the pro ones have some simulation capability. There's Minecraft and its imitators. We have the capability, and sizable numbers of users. It's not mainstream, but it's in wide use.
- PinkMilkshake 8y ago
  Alan Kay (and others) developed a 3D collaborative world in Smalltalk called Croquet [1]. Definitely one of the most interesting virtual worlds I've come across. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project
- jonsen 8y ago
  It goes further back than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simula
antfarm 8y ago
Around 1996 was the hayday of Artificial Life and Complex Adaptive Systems research and (agent-based) computer simulation of living systems, including ecological, social and economical, was a very common topic in popular science publications.
rchaud 8y ago
Yeah, when the page first loaded, I thought somebody actually took "motherfuckingwebsite.com" seriously and built a raw HTML page with no margins or padding beyond the browser defaults.

wmf 8y ago

Tangentially related: if anyone (or their kids) is bored with voxels, try Astroneer; it's more like virtual clay. https://astroneer.space/ https://astroneer.space/

petermcneeley 8y ago
But if you cant build a quad core CPU inside the game then whats the point? https://youtu.be/SPaI5BJxs5M https://youtu.be/SPaI5BJxs5M

platz 8y ago

> The fog surrounding economic projections, and the other uses and abuses of statistical evidence in politics, might lift at least a little. The perpetual historical failure of academic economic modelers is a counterexample to this line of thinking; to think non-academically trained folks would fare better is laughable

trentlott 8y ago
I mean, this was the essential point that brought about chaos theory, right? Rounding wind speeds down at the force of a butterfly flap caused significant deviations for known weather patterns. Having people half-ass assumptions because they read about a supply/demand curve once and can scrap DJIA data in order to gamble their 15k savings is unlikely to be widespread, but definitely something to consider if that is your argument. However, it would still least breed familiarity. I take your point that this will probably not help things and...well, I guess I've run out of steam in my own comment. Ignorance is bad, and staying in ivory towers will end badly. The obvious route for education will likely only foster arrogance and cynicism. What's the third way? Make everyone read Kant and write "Marx was a philosopher, not an economist" 100 times?
Nasrudith 8y ago
It might be good for thinking critically however. That could result in a technical truth - if nobody is fooled by models then they won't be used to deceive. If everyone can pick out and point to what is missed or inappropriate models it could and emerging absurdities. I suspect in that regards it is more a way to teach critical thinking. The informality could be a boon - less reason to stick to the rules of tenure knifefighting.

aaron695 8y ago

Like the Goat Simulator? Seems like we are there?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

TaylorAlexander 8y ago

Well I definitely spend most of my hobby time modeling 3D printed robots!

llamataboot 8y ago

I'd love to see more "gamey" and fun platforms for agent-based modeling (Sims, but with different types of goals to tweak!) and something for system dynamics modeling. There's been a few runs at both, but for how poor human brains are at intuiting things about non-linear systems, and how desperately we need to understand them, more things in this area would be great!

troquerre 8y ago
Factorio is a great game that teaches system dynamics without having that as an explicit goal

ssivark 8y ago

Agree broadly with everything in the article. However, I have one point to add: > Physical models that reproduce behavior are limited by the physics of the world, while computer models have much looser bounds. This is also one of the weak points of computer modeling. The outputs are strongly influenced by modeling assumptions, and without feedback from reality, one can easily be deluded towards wrong models. The computer simulation encodes the map not the territory. This is particularly true in hard to model fields like economics & finance. As long as one appreciates that, computer modeling is a powerful tool. Regarding what would make modeling more accessible to computer users, I think the answer is an environment where users have access to the full live system (few boundaries) and can tweak it in real-time, with right feedback loops. Eg: Smalltalk, Lisp.

btown 8y ago
"All models are wrong, but some are useful" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong
- AllegedAlec 8y ago
  I like how Paulien Hogeweg phrased it too: "thinking in the most interesting simplification" [0] I always thought the 'but models are wrong' is quite a weak excuse. Newtonian physics is a wrong model of how the universe works. Using it though; we put a man on the moon. Einsteinian physics are incomplete, but it allows us to use satellites moving at roughly 10KM/s to pinpoint our location to within a few metres. A model's usefulness is not about how accurately it describes what is happening, but about whether it describes what happens at a certain meso-scale accurately. [0]: http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/issues/lt2011/lt07/lt_2011_07_26_29.pdf http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/issues/lt2011/lt07/lt_2011_...
  - phkahler 8y ago
    >> Einsteinian physics are incomplete, but it allows us to use satellites moving at roughly 10KM/s to pinpoint our location to within a few metres. Funny. I know how GPS works and that knowing the SAT locations is critical, but I never thought about how fast they are moving. They need to transmit their own position and time with great accuracy. In particular, don't they have to transmit their time and position at the time of transmission? That is a more interesting problem than I realized.

zokier 8y ago

It is a shame that the field is pretty undeveloped still after 20 years. Only recently there have been popping up few consumer CADs (fusion360/onshape), but those are still quite limited and of course do not satisfy free software user like me. Setting up decent physical simulations seems yet another whole endeavor even if you got your model done. There are few physics engines available, but using them seems to require fair amount of work even just for basics. Then comes the social sharong aspect that the article mentions as "Shared federated simulation environments". While I don't think that we need such fully immersive shared environment that the author envisioned, just being able to share models and simulations for exploration on the web would be nice. Being able to get nice photographic-like visualizations would be then the cherry on top this whole thing.

mojomark 8y ago
>>(fusion360/onshape), but those are still quite limited and of course do not satisfy free software user like me. Fusion360 is free (1). I used it for a while; though I didn't get into all of the features so I didn't really explore the physical simulation capabilities in depth, but I know it's supported to a degree (2). I'd imagine the FEA engine isn't as rigorous as paid software like say, Autodesk Inventor or Solidworks. As someone who does a fair amount of 3D modeling, I've always thought sketchup was on the right track. It's also available in a free version of course, and the 3D warehouse has a ton of pre-made models in it that I use all the time. From my experience, I would say the community-built sketchup plug-ins available are decent, but definitely hit-or-miss. I've never found a good (i.e. non-buggy and well-supported) 'physical simulation' plug-in for sketchup, but I haven't checked the plugin store in a while. That, and some plugins require sketchup pro, which isn't free. In the free software domain, I'd say basic Sketchup is good for quick mock-ups, whereas Fusion 360 can be used for higher precision modeling. 1. https://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/fusion-360-for-hobbyists https://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/fusion-360-for-hobbyists 2. https://www.udemy.com/fea-simulations-with-fusion-360-static-structural-focus/ https://www.udemy.com/fea-simulations-with-fusion-360-static...
- zokier 8y ago
  > Fusion360 is free (1) I do enjoy the occasional beer, but it is no substitute for liberty; that path would only lead to alcoholism

Quequau 8y ago

Years ago I read "Growing Artificial Societies - Social Science from the Bottom Up" by Joshua M. Epstein and Robert L. Axtell and was really motivated to do computer modeling as some sort of hobby. For me at least the problem was once I got their original model up and running I wasn't able to sustain the focus to construct a graphical representation that was compelling. So I never went back and debugged the stuff that I added to model (not seriously anyway).

Quequau 8y ago
lol and that comment just trigger an old google alert I have running on this topic.

meheleventyone 8y ago

I think it has, just not in the way the author intends here. This article was basically written on the cusp of the game modding scene really taking off online, followed by the indie game revolution of the early 2000's into what we see today as a glut of games being released. The popular computer modeling pastime is game development and exhibits much of what is talked about in the article.

Theodores 8y ago

VRML became really good a couple of years after this with SGI's CosmoWorlds. I built some incredible things with it, with my actual sister as if we had gone back to childhood with the LEGO bricks out. In fact my sister's well paid career is entirely due to how impressive the VRML that fitted on a floppy disk was. Funny to think that you also applied for jobs by post back then. Admittedly the texture rendering was not up to modern gaming standards but everything worked and existed on a beautiful imaginative plane - much like how a little bit of imagination is needed with LEGO. But then we realised nobody else was on the trail. Our models were far in advance of anything published online. Only the SGI demos were cooler than what we had come up with. Then there weren't many of those beyond the demo disk that came with new SGI machines (and needed the power of an SGI machine). The tools - Cosmoworlds - were fantastic and not hard. I particularly liked the audio aspect, being able to have different music play in a scene and for the stereo to move around as you explored a scene. If I was a musician then I would have wanted my album played that way. But no musician thought to put their traxxx in a 3D virtual world, online for the world to hear. They had distribution in those days so the required VRML viewer could have been distributed on CD to solve the problem of that ten minute download over dial up. 3D then became the cottage industry that it remained, only done in games companies or by specialists doing things like oil exploration, CAD or other things like TV adverts. Despite the wonders of CosmoWorlds it never became this accessible thing that people wanted to play with in a Lego like way. After my sister and myself pushed VRML so far my sister ended up working in a world where the interactive exhibits she was to be building for one of the world's greatest museums would only ever be flat and two dimensional. The portfolio of awesome interactivity that got her the job never made it past the bureaucracy, committees and bullshit of the regular world. It was a glimpse of a future that was never going to happen, a high note of creativity to never be reached again. We downsize our dreams, from 3+ dimensions to 2. The problem wasn't us or SGI's CosmoWorlds. It was everyone else. We are not that adventurous as a species. On a given day the finest mountain tops with the most awesome views only have a small amount of people there, not seven billion people. Even though getting there needs no more effort than putting one foot in front of the other for half the day.

Joakal 8y ago

For those that are developers/programmers, you might like OpenSCAD where models are generated from code. I prefer it over knowing where/when to use menu items. As a bonus, the exports work with 3D printers. Source: Printed parts of a hand as a hobby.

lkschubert8 8y ago
I absolutely love the idea of OpenSCAD, but it's speed is extremely painful, even for things that are geometric. As soon as you start trying to make something more organic it crawls.

vinceguidry 8y ago

I wonder if there's not a more basic reason for the observations of the author. When I code as a hobby, my main goal is to make sure that no effort is wasted. I get precious little free time to hobby code as it is, so every minute spent in front of a text editor that's not driving forward to the desired goal feels almost physically painful. The last thing I want to do in my off time is fiddle endlessly with all the endless layers of friction. To hobby is to demand instant gratification. The land of hobby seems to want to be connected to the land of research. But research is only truly useful when the desire for instant gratification can be dispelled. If I'm reading the author correctly, computer modeling might be that magical land where hobby and research can commingle. Where instant gratification can produce tangible research results. I'm not convinced. Is it really a matter of tooling? Because it seems to me that any kind of modeling that would actually have research potential is going to have to be invented. So now my hobby involves research and invention? Maybe after I retire.

logram 8y ago
Hopefully I didn't misunderstand what you meant, but I'd argue that a hobby is exactly not instant gratification. That I would call entertainment. In my opinion the gratification of a hobby comes from enjoyment of the process itself. For example, if you play music, drilling through the same couple of measures until it sounds right might not pay off until the end, which might take hours and hours of work across many days. If you don't enjoy the process then you won't take it up as a hobby, but that doesn't mean there is constant gratification. Even more, the end result might not be as good as a professional product -- but it's yours and it's the journey that counts. I say that instant gratification is entertainment because I would compare that to playing games or watching a movie. There's no process there, it's just gratification. An example would be the people that make emulators as a hobby. Across their journey they find so many special cases and undocumented behaviour that it is certainly a lot of work riddled with unexpected obstacles. But exactly that is the process of problem solving and ultimately what they enjoy.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  Music is a great example. I used to play guitar, I don't now because the time investment needed to get to fulfillment is too heavy. I can pick up a guitar and noodle around with it, but the impetus to take it seriously as a hobby is just no longer there, because of all the perceived friction. Of course, if I'd taken it seriously as a kid, I wouldn't have that friction and I could count the guitar among my regular hobbies. I don't have that same attitude towards the keyboard, which requires far less finger dexterity and thus practice. I'll probably never pick up a guitar for more than a few minutes ever again, but I can see myself buying a keyboard and stand and going at a piece of music for ten minutes or so every day. (it's a bit of a contrived example, the real reason I don't play my guitars at the moment is because I don't like what it does to my fingers.) This is what I mean by instant gratification. Everybody draws their line differently, but it's hard to argue that the line doesn't or shouldn't exist. A hobby is what you spend your excess time and money on without expecting a financial return from it. Having an impact is fine, but commerce it isn't, otherwise you call it a side project.

moron4hire 8y ago

Definitely needs a "(1996)" on the title.

CupOfJava 8y ago

I want to model my home in 3D, with measurements. What's a good free alternative to autocad for that?

trentlott 8y ago
Blender allows for the use of human units. It also contains engines for physics and lots of videos explaining how to do interesting things, including allowing for Python scripting Choosing a very popular free platform has benefits (blender.org)
LeonM 8y ago
Sketchup [0] has a free version for personal use [0] https://www.sketchup.com/ https://www.sketchup.com/
Sileni 8y ago
Doesn't have all the functionality that AutoCAD does, and there are some usability issues if you're really comfortable in AutoCAD already, but I imagine FreeCAD [0] would work well for your use case. [0]: https://www.freecadweb.org/ https://www.freecadweb.org/
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  I'm particular the BIM workbench is looking pretty slick these days [1] [1] https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/BIM_Workbench https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/BIM_Workbench
sanbor 8y ago
SweetHome3d is what you're looking for: http://www.sweethome3d.com/ http://www.sweethome3d.com/

dkuebric 8y ago

Seems like the author was right; I'd look to Minecraft as the analogue for model trains.

anonlastname 8y ago

Many games have a modding community. A lot of these mods are usually suprisingly detailed model packs.

sevensor 8y ago

I've had a lot of fun with agent-based and discrete event simulations. Hook it up to a visual and it's basically a game. Writing a basic simulation engine is also a lot of fun. Simulation is also the only application where I've felt comfortable with classical object-oriented modeling. I always find that object oriented programming forces me to deal with a lot of emergent complexity, but when you're doing simulation modeling, emergent complexity is the whole point.

gglitch 8y ago
Sounds awesome. Can you say more? What languages or environments, what kinds of things you're modeling, other writeups?
- sevensor 8y ago
  NetLogo is fun for toy agent-based simulation models. It includes visuals. For discrete event simulation, I recommend SimPy. If you like animations and you're willing to trade some personal info for free stuff, Simio has a free version that supports mixing discrete event and agent based simulation. Edit: I realize I only answered about half of your question. I was in grad school when I did simulation modeling, this was about 5 years ago. I was working on modeling industrial processes. Simulation is great in that context because at a certain point queueing theory breaks down. I can't tell you how many talks I sat through that derived exciting conclusions from the assumption that all arrival processes are Markovian.

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