Search Unity

Unity-authored projects win top honors at serious games and virtual reality conferences

April 26, 2012 in Community | 4 min. read
Share

Is this article helpful for you?

Thank you for your feedback!

After GDC, we took some time to spread our wings outside of the entertainment space to exhibit at industry events for military training, and virtual reality. To our delight, Unity received non-stop interest at both the Defense GameTech Users and Laval Virtual International Meeting on Virtual Reality conferences. Our booth at GameTech, and co-booth at Laval (special thanks to our French reseller AGMD), were packed with participants wanting to learn more about creating Simulations, Training and Virtual Reality applications with Unity. Even better, at GameTech, four Unity-authored projects won top awards in three prize categories while simultaneously, at Laval Virtual, four separate projects won honors in virtual reality. In total, eight Unity powered non-game projects were awarded prizes in late March.

Unity projects sweep the Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge, take home $41,000USD in prize money

The Defense GameTech User’s Conference took place in Orlando, Florida. This is a US hosted international forum on computer and mobile based military training using game technology.

The Federal Virtual World Challenge,(FVWC) is a serious games competition that takes place each year at GameTech. Hosted by the US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, Simulation and Training Technology Center, the FVWC invites the training development community to create innovative, interactive training and analysis solutions using game technology. Cash prizes were awarded in 4 categories this year: Distance Learning, Concept Building, Familiarization and Holodeck- Making it So.

For the second year in a row, a Unity-authored project from Innovation in Learning (IIL) won the $25,000 USD Grand Prize. IIL’s “CliniSpace BattleCare” leveraged Unity’s cross-platform deployment capabilities to build an interactive graphic novel style iOS App to train medical staff on the basics of battlefield trauma triage.

Prasad Amberkar, Technical Lead for CliniSpace says that “Unity’s cross-platform development and deployment was as easy as it could get. We were able to rapidly create custom tools on Unity, which helped streamline and speed up our processes. The run-time/remote profiler has helped us identify elements (content, function calls etc.) that need optimisation for seamless running on tablet devices. Overall it has been a great experience working with Unity and we consider it the optimum game engine for our work”.

Fragile Earth Studios won second place in the “Holodeck” category with their Unity-powered TerraViz project, a multi-platform 3D data visualization tool that runs on desktops, web browsers, and mobile devices.

“We've found the flexibility of Unity very helpful in our work”, says Julien Lynge a video game developer from Fragile Earth Studios. “Unity’s documentation was great, and the environment was intuitive, but what really sold us was the community. We could usually get questions answered in under a day between the forums and Unity Answers, and we found tons of sample code and projects to leverage.”

Finally, both the winner and runner-up in the “Familiarization” category were Unity-based projects. Designing Digitally, Inc. won for its 3D Virtual Campus Tours of the United States Air Force Academy, intended to be used for recruitment purposes. The runner up was the Canadian Virtual Naval Fleet — Navy Learning Support Center, which allows sailors to practice their skills in a virtual space before they are assigned to the actual ship.

And in France…Unity arrives in Virtual Reality

At the Laval Virtual International Meeting on Virtual Reality in France, our host’s booth was bustling. Unity technical support staff didn’t get a break from answering questions for the multitude of visitors keen to learn more about Unity (we definitely have to book more tech support for next year!)

Laval Virtual is a unique, international three-day trade show in France for virtual reality, augmented reality, marketing, military simulation, immersive and interactive content, and real-time 3D applications. Once again, a number of Unity-authored projects received awards including:

  • EMCO3 won in the Science and Education category for MD Adviser, a medical training application that trains students in how to correctly diagnose a patient:
  • MiddleVR from company i’m.in.VR won in the Engineering, Assembly and Maintenance category for its plugin that adds virtual reality capabilities to Unity.
  • TeamLab Inc., of Japan, won in the Architecture, Art and Culture category for their project What a Loving and Beautiful World. The project presents all of the flowers, trees, butterflies, birds and rainbows that appear in Japanese calligraphy in a real-time virtual 3D space.

We also want to highlight the special recognition Unity customer Augmented Magic received at Laval Virtual, for “creating a new kind of augmented reality.” Augmented Magic is an entertainment company headed by the magician Moulla, who incorporates 3D virtual reality content into his shows. “It is like a big video game, but onstage, with a player, who happens to be the magician Moulla,” says Gamgie Rignault, technical director and 3D effects creator at Augmented Magic. “Moulla has to be free to move wherever and whenever he wants to, with the virtual reality content connected to his movements.”

We are excited about the growing momentum for Unity in these new markets and we already look forward to seeing what our customers will win next year!

April 26, 2012 in Community | 4 min. read

Is this article helpful for you?

Thank you for your feedback!