I was blown away to hear today that Unity is now free for small independent developers! This is the same gaming platform that I used for hypocenter, a recent installation piece. The great thing about Unity is that if you are familiar with javaScript you can easily write code for this platform. As a gaming platform, Unity has built-in physics and all of the standard features you would expect.
I think that this development will make it much more likely that alternative uses of gaming technologies are developed. Cool!