Looking to games for GIS tech.

I just finished reading a small snippet in Wired about the City of New York using the video game Second Life to do urban planning. They have placed maps of the park in the game and are looking for the vast community to come up with redesign ideas for the park.

Google Earth (yeah had to mention it...) is built on the same techniques used in most 3D game engines. One of these days we'll realize in the business world that all of those hours I spent playing Quake3 were for the common good of my company :) Ok, so maybe that's taking it a bit far.

Just wanted to remind everyone that there are tools out there that you may not have even thought about, but it's there waiting for new exploitation.