Why Godot?

bsldld

I am looking for a tech co-founder for my Space exploration themed XR(eXtended Reality) simulation project. So I was talking to engineers(from various parts of the world) who have 3D graphics programming background. Everyone said that I should either use Unity or Unreal. Now I don't have a 3D programming background(though I am a software engineer). So, this brings up the question, is Godot the wrong choice for my project?

Here is briefly what the project wants to achieve:

Develop simple Space exploration-based simulations in XR to excite students about TEAMS(Technology, Engineering, Arts, Maths and Science) subjects. For example, simulate the effect of what happens* if balloons filled with coloured water are exposed to the environment on the surface of the Moon?(answer is at the bottom of this post). There are many such science, maths and engineering related questions that can be simulated in an engaging way to excite students about the subjects.

So, for this type of project, is Godot not suitable? What are the pros and cons?

I selected Godot because it is open source, light weight, has good support for Android XR, has a fantastic community, easy to learn and I am excited about Godot 4.0.

But I am no expert in Godot, hence would like the community to help me understand what are the pros and cons of using Godot for the above project? Is my decision to use Godot right?

For the example simulation question mentioned above the answer is: The water in the balloon starts boiling, and the balloons start inflating and ultimately burst. The water that splurts out immediately freezes and floats into space.

cybereality

So Godot can do everything graphics wise as Unity or Unreal, though those engines are more mature and do have more features. But Godot can look very good, and works better on older hardware, and is faster to develop. I haven't done any XR in a while, but my understanding is that Unity/Unreal do have better support (particularly on mobile) because they integrated proprietary APIs. Godot recently got full support for OpenXR, so on desktop you can do most things no problem. However, mobile is still under development, and the plug-ins I've seen were not up to date or fully working. However, if you have a team of programmers, you could integrate the Android/Apple APIs yourself, I don't think it would be difficult for a talented programmer.

Erich_L

Godot is doable, I don't know about suitable. I guess it comes down to which simulations you're willing to code in depth. You might want to look at which simulations you think will be the most challenging or the most important to the project and make sure Unreal or Unity doesn't already have quick solutions. Also, TEAMS? Which sad face artist succeeded in defeating STEM?

bsldld

@Erich_L said: ... Also, TEAMS? Which sad face artist succeeded in defeating STEM?

TEAMS includes "Arts" subject as well, which is unfortunately not part of STEM. Also Arts subject is at the centre of the acronym: TE-A-MS. And TEAMS sounds better than STEM, as it reflects teamwork.

cybereality

Also, engineering requires art. If you actually want to come up with a new idea.

Erich_L

I'm not against "TEAMS" but if you're gunna be liberal about it why not just throw all the letters together? Kinda defeats the reason they used the STEM word. Unless you're discovering art through STEM...? I guess? Props to you tho @bsldld, the next generation could really use better learning tools.

bsldld

I'm not against "TEAMS" but if you're gunna be liberal about it why not just throw all the letters together?

Forming what acronym? It has to be short, memorable and meaningful.

Kinda defeats the reason they used the STEM word.

And what reason would that be?

Unless you're discovering art through STEM...? I guess?

It is exactly the opposite. Arts is integral part of any STEM subjects. STEM subjects evolve from Arts. After all, it is also called as Humanities. Unfortunately, in the hubris of making policy(mostly funded by the tech industry) to promote STEM subjects, the education policymakers forgot the Arts part of the subjects. And after there was some backlash from the education community, came up with rather meek acronym of "STEAM" which does not make sense. So I prefer TEAMS, which not only puts Arts at the center but also reflects teamwork.

Props to you tho @bsldld, the next generation could really use better learning tools.

Thank you! Please do let me know if anyone well versed in Godot will be interested in teaming up with me for this project.

Erich_L

I have worked for quite awhile as a teacher, so I could probably write 10 pages on how I feel about replacing STEM with TEAMS, but I'll just give a TLDR version because I think the game part is more interesting / important. Blunt/rude hopefully direct TLDR version: The whole idea of TEAMS is just stupid, STEM had a place, it drew attention to the need for the kind of skills needed to create innovative technologies in that they're higher wage fields in demand but lacking talent. Throwing Art in there is just pandering, math reveals amazing art. I have never had art reveal to me important math. Engineering can always use art but art does not build rockets. If the term STEM is no longer needed- fine, but adding an A and making a gross mutant offspring from it "TEAMS" is just offensive to my brain. If you say STEM evolves from arts then why even mention it? If that's the case you're being far too generic with the word art IMHO. By education community I assume you mean the US one in which they are already known for being extremely successful whiners (probably a nicer way to put that). Uhhhg I really want to go on but I'll stop there.

I don't think games geared toward education are any good. If you do create a good simulation for educational purposes I think you'd be better off just making a video of what you did and put it in a video like with 3blue1brown's math videos.

I do strongly believe, especially since being a little inspired by Musk, that we should incorporate STEM knowledge into games. I think that can only work in an indirect way with at best an option to look closer at some mechanic. Edit: Look I lost steam there at the end cause I got all worked up about teams lololol

bsldld

Throwing Art in there is just pandering, math reveals amazing art. I have never had art reveal to me important math. Engineering can always use art but art does not build rockets.

I think there is a bit of a disconnect here with the terminology. "Arts" here is analogous to Humanities and not just limited to painting, music etc. I have seen Arts and Humanities used interchangeably. And this encompasses subjects like media, business, finance, social sciences etc.

If you say STEM evolves from arts then why even mention it?

When I say evolve, I mean that the trigger for evolution of STEM subjects is almost always from the Arts subjects.

By education community I assume you mean the US one in which they are already known for being extremely successful whiners (probably a nicer way to put that).

I am from the UK. But I was talking about the education community from all across the world.

Look I lost steam there at the end cause I got all worked up about teams lololol

Yes, and STEAM is what I am trying to replace with by TEAMS (STEM was already replaced by STEAM after the objection from the education community).

cybereality

Science is art, though. If you just think of engineering and science as studying formulas and writing equations, you will never develop a new idea. And math is beautiful, the elegance of some formulas and how they work, is art. Albert Einstein was an artist. Not in the formulas he produced, but in his original thinking. He was able to imagine things in his mind that it took smart scientists 50 years to understand (I just read an article about something Einstein had theorized, that was just confirmed by science in 2022). That takes an artist's mind.

Erich_L

I am not convinced STEM has been supplanted. Stem probably thanks to stem cell research has long been cemented as a "sciency" word and it is used sparingly enough to lend itself to have the science tech... acronym's meaning. Teams is already far too common of a word and has none of the "sciency" appeal. The first page of google results for "TEAMS acronym" has the 'a' stand for "achieving" or "accomplishing", no reference to art. STEM relates to immediately important (for solving engineering problems) and easily measurable skills.

cybereality

Well I could agree with you there. I'm not sure TEAMS is a good name, since it is already a common word, a Microsoft product, etc. which destroys any SEO attempts. Though STEM is also a common word like a tree or plant, also stem cell research, or the term for originating. Kind of hard to come up with anything new these days.

bsldld

Teams is already far too common of a word and has none of the "sciency" appeal.

It doesn't have to be. That is the point. It has to give equal weightage to non-sciency subjects as well. And it also has to make students think about teamwork rather than just individual pursuits.

Megalomaniak

TED: Technology, Education & Design. Science(of which math in turn is a component) is involved in all, so redundant to mention.

duane

Science is art, though. If you just think of engineering and science as studying formulas and writing equations, you will never develop a new idea. And math is beautiful, the elegance of some formulas and how they work, is art. Albert Einstein was an artist. Not in the formulas he produced, but in his original thinking. He was able to imagine things in his mind that it took smart scientists 50 years to understand (I just read an article about something Einstein had theorized, that was just confirmed by science in 2022). That takes an artist's mind.

I hate to further derail this discussion, and I don't have any interest in changing fashions in education (formal education did almost nothing good for me during my life, though it did waste a lot of my money).

However, I have to disagree on this point. Art and science are VERY different. Einstein's most celebrated original thinking was based on applying established principles of electromagnetism he'd read as a youth in a more general way. He took existing theory and considered (more) how it would affect the everyday world.

Calling that art is doing a disservice to Einstein and all of the giants whose shoulders he stood on. Their great contribution to knowledge was not coming up with new ideas, but rigorously developing the logic that supports them (even before we had the technology to prove every detail).

Creativity and logic originate in completely different parts of the brain. Artists have famously disdained logic and reason for millennia. Science demands them.

And it really didn't take scientists much time to understand Einstein's work. Some of them disagreed, but nearly everyone who read his papers accepted them as the logical development of previous work. Of course it took a long time to get practical proof, but that's been true of theoretical physics for at least two centuries. If the math works, you can kind of assume that it's true until the hard evidence comes in.

cybereality

Education is very important, but you also get what you put in. I've been guilty of that myself at times. If you think what you're learning is not important, then you won't learn it, and you gain nothing. For example, I was always good at math in school, but I thought what they were teaching was useless. If they just told me back then that I could make a character jump with gravity in a game, or taught us how to make evolutionary simulations, or something actually practical, I think I would have been a lot more interested.

And no, there is no difference between science and art. This is another thing that they try to confuse you about in school. They tell you artists are starving and make no money (while some of the influential people in history were artists). That you need to be a doctor to be respected (I think people gave that one up). I've made more money than some doctors writing code for video games. Or that somehow science is the most important thing. I do think science is important, but it's not the only thing. You need an imagination, like I am saying with Einstein, just doing math takes you nowhere. You need the initial hypothesis, and what Einstein imagined was far out there for his time.

bsldld

@duane said:

.... I have to disagree on this point. Art and science are VERY different....He took existing theory and considered (more) how it would affect the everyday world.

That imagination is part of Art. This way of thinking is developed by getting involved in Arts/Humanities subjects. Not everyone requires that but it helps overall thinking for almost all. Otherwise Maths and Science subjects would just become rote learning and hence lot of students are put-off by these subjects. Which is really a loss to humanity.

Calling that art is doing a disservice to Einstein and all of the giants whose shoulders he stood on. Their great contribution to knowledge was not coming up with new ideas, but rigorously developing the logic that supports them (even before we had the technology to prove every detail).

Coming up with logic that supports the ideas you have come up with, demonstrates the point. First you have to imagine the concept(this is part of what Arts subjects develop) e.g. imagining space-time curvature requires a visual brian which artists use so often! Then you have to develop the logic and demonstrate it using maths rigour(this is the Maths part). The same is true for Science. The proposal of DNA struture was a classic case of how it was imagined. And for Engineering, if you see some of the robots that engineers are developing they are nothing but mimicking nature. This all requires the ability to connect Arts with Science, Engineering, Maths and Technology. Few people have that naturally. Most don't. Hence introducing Arts/Humanities at an early age helps in developing the ability to form these connections easily.

Creativity and logic originate in completely different parts of the brain.

And that is the reason for introducing Arts with Science, Maths, Engineering and Technology. It develops the brain holistically. Not just the logic part of the brain, but also the creative part.

If the math works, you can kind of assume that it's true until the hard evidence comes in.

And coming up with Maths for things even before there is hard evidence for it requires a lot of imagination, which is what is developed by Arts subjects in a far engaging way.

bsldld

@cybereality said: .... For example, I was always good at math in school, but I thought what they were teaching was useless. If they just told me back then that I could make a character jump with gravity in a game, or taught us how to make evolutionary simulations, or something actually practical, I think I would have been a lot more interested.

This!

And this is what I am trying to change with my project. We now have tools and technologies to do that. I am just trying to link practical, real-world examples(in my case Space exploration) with education in an engaging and entertaining way.