clipped from www.moresitephocus.com

I was not surprised to hear about the need for landscape architects to design virtual sites, but amazed that it had finally happened. In 2000, I gave a lecture about the future of landscape architecture to a local garden club and ended it with the thought of landscape architects becoming involved in developing video games. At the time, I had been tinkering with developing models of environments for the on-line, first person shooter Quake III. It was fascinating to have total control of the environment and then interact with it. Obviously, it was not the same as the real world. Smell, touch, and the feeling of space were noticeably absent, but the design did affect the player’s behaviors and were enjoyable to view. I couldn’t help but approach it from a landscape architect’s perspective - an unlimited budget and not having to necessarily worry about physics was liberating.