Mining Companies Borrow From Gamers' Physics Engines 39
littlekorea writes "Mining companies are developing new systems for automating blasting of iron ore using the same open source physics engines adapted for games such as Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption. The same engine that determines 3D collision detection and soft body/rigid body dynamics in gaming will be applied to building 3D blast movement models — which will predict where blasted materials will land and distinguish between ore and waste. Predictive blast fragmentation models used in the past have typically been either numerical or empirical, [mining engineer Alan Cocker] said. Numerical models such as discrete element method, he noted, are onerous to configure and demanding of resources — both computing and human — and are generally not appropriate for operational use at mines. 'The problem with empirical models, by contrast, is that they tend to operate at a scale too coarse to give results useful for optimizations,' he added, noting typical Kuz-Ram-based fragmentation models (PDF) (widely used to estimate fragmentation from blasting) assume homogeneous geology (the same type of materials) throughout a blast."
Gonna n00b tube this mineshaft LOL. (Score:1, Funny)
Totally pwned the earth's crust with this frag.
Did hell just freeze over? (Score:5, Funny)
This is rather notable in that it's the first article I've seen in a while that talks about both GPU-compute and mining without being about Bitcoin.
Re:Did hell just freeze over? (Score:5, Funny)
This is rather notable in that it's the first article I've seen in a while that talks about both GPU-compute and mining without being about Bitcoin.
You just invoked jhantin's law....
I have my own law now? News to me. But I was talking about the articles linked from the story, not the comments.
New procedure for mining... (Score:4, Funny)
adapted for games such as Grand Theft Auto IV
1) Blast the rock into pieces.
2) Slap the pieces until the metal falls out.
3) Profit!
Re:Captain Planet (Score:4, Funny)
We can model that too.