A construction company is using the technology behind Doom, a genre-pioneering 1993 shooter game about one space marine's efforts to keep a horde of marauding space demons from reaching Earth, to create hospitals, of all things. Hospitals that, just to be clear, do not resemble the ransacked Phobos research station where most of the action of Doom takes place, before it takes place in Hell.
According to Popular Science, DIRTT (which stands for Doing It Right This Time) uses a piece of software based on the Doom engine to render 2D blueprints for hospital walls and office spaces in 3D. Which is how the Doom engine created, among other locales, the lair of the spider demon who masterminded one of the greatest threats humanity has ever faced.
Because the program, called ICE, interfaces with AutoCAD and other design softwares, engineers and architects can use it not only to mock up a room, but to "create a live data set for every aspect of a space, including the electrical engineering, millwork, and piping." They then use those blueprints, not to delineate the acid pits of Deimos, but to very quickly pre-fabricate walls equipped with pretty much everything they need to function, that are also flexible enough to respond to changes in technology.
Though they go back to the MS-DOS days, ICE's gaming roots are also finding application in what DIRTT president Scott Jenkins envisions as the company's future, through virtual reality applications: "Imagine, if you slapped on those Oculus glasses, you could view what changes to make as if you were in the room."
· Using 'Doom' To Design A Room [Popular Science]