Half-Wright

A video showing up all over the place lately is this three-and-a-half-minute digital walkthrough of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. Made by "a Half Life user known as Kasperg," the video was produced using the game's own source engine.


According to the blog digitally distributed environments:

Using the Source Engine, as opposed to more traditional Architectural Software, allows the use of dynamic lighting and a real-time walkthrough of the scene in high resolution. The movie demonstrates the quality of Half Life for visualisation using both a standard walkthrough and half way through a fly-through using the Half Life 'Noclip' option.

Meanwhile, architectural schools could instantly boost students' morale if their course orientation packets came with a videogame wherein users go around blowing up anything built by Le Corbusier, in the most violent way possible. The exact explosive dynamics of architectural masterpieces.
Or Space Invaders: The Next Generation, in which you, armed to the teeth, defend 100,000 acres of pristine Colorado wilderness from an architecturally unimaginative suburban housing boom...

(See also City of Sound. With thanks to both Timo Tolonen and Ben Brockert for the tip!)