Using Spatial OS for simulation

[Azure]

Hi guys,
I have been interested in improbable ever since I heard about the company in Wired Magazine some time back.

Im new to using unity, I just wanted to ask if anyone could point in the right direction for designing simulations? I am particularly interested in using Spatial OS for epidemiological simulation.

In the press I have about Spatial OS being used for simulating Cambridge as well as Manchester, for city planning and analysis. Were these simulations this built using Spatial OS and Unity alone? Or where other specific tools involved? Any thoughts, help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Look forward to learning more.

[charlie]

Hi @Azure!

Usually when making simulations that aren’t games, we tend to use Unity as a visualisation tool only. This means you can connect a Unity client to the simulation and have it render entities, but all the logic for the simulation is actually running elsewhere.

You can use one of the following worker SDKs to write the actual logic of your simulation:

• C++: https://spatialos.improbable.io/docs/reference/10.3/workers/cpp/introduction
• C#: https://spatialos.improbable.io/docs/reference/10.3/workers/csharp/introduction
• Java (experimental): https://spatialos.improbable.io/docs/reference/10.3/workers/java/introduction
• JavaScript (highly experimental): https://spatialos.improbable.io/docs/reference/10.3/workers/javascript/introduction

So you don’t need to use Unity for your simulation if you don’t think it’s a suitable tool for the job.

We used to have some tutorials that walked you through making a Brownian motion simulation with the Java SDK, where the particles could ‘infect’ and ‘cure’ each other. I don’t think the tutorial is currently in a state where it could be published (turns out there’s a quality bar for these things!), but we might be able to get you a working copy of the project if you’d like to learn by example.

[Azure]

Hi Charlie,

Thanks for the prompt response. That sounds really interesting and I would be definitely interested in the brownian motion simulation, I am guessing that quite a number of groups would find using spatial OS attractive for simulation work.

I would be really interested in learning by example and looking at examples that have attempted to simulate aspects of the real world.

Thanks for the links, I started reading through the worker SDK introduction, but feel like I use probably complete the pirates tutorial just so I can see how everything operates in practice.

[charlie]

Hi @Azure,

I think you’re right to get stuck into the Pirates tutorial to get a general feel for how the system works. I’ve had a look to see if there are non-game tutorials/projects that might be useful to you, but on further inspection none of them are sufficiently up to date to make good teaching material.

If you’d like I can drop you a message should suitable tutorials or demo projects become available.

[Azure]

Hi Charlie,

That would great, its much appreciated.