Image courtesy of NASA
Unreal Fest 2022 content for simulation now available on demand
December 15, 2022
This year, it was New Orleans’ turn to play host to Unreal Fest, our annual conference for passionate creators across industries, with inspiring speakers and practical training. In three action-packed days, we got through more than 120 sessions, including a special track for the simulation industry. The simulation community was well represented at the event, with over 100 people with a simulation background in attendance.
If you couldn’t make it in person, you can catch up on those valuable sessions—featuring speakers from NASA, dSPACE, Maxar, blackshark.ai, Cesium, Esri, Red 6, Metatexel, CAE, and Epic Games—right here.
If you couldn’t make it in person, you can catch up on those valuable sessions—featuring speakers from NASA, dSPACE, Maxar, blackshark.ai, Cesium, Esri, Red 6, Metatexel, CAE, and Epic Games—right here.
NASA Lunar Terrain Visualization in Unreal Engine 5
In this session, NASA Aerospace Engineer Lee Bingham and Software Engineer Jack Kincaid reveal how they are using Unreal Engine 5 to generate and visualize accurate lunar terrain for engineering and exploration. The presentation delves into the pros and cons of three different systems the team has developed for terrain visualization—using the Landscape tool, Nanite, and Clipmaps respectively—and discusses how features like Lumen and Virtual Shadow Maps are enabling them to create realistic environments that factor in effects like bounce lighting from spacesuits and even earthshine.
Teaching Autonomous Vehicles to Drive with Visible and Non-Visible Light Simulation
Based on Unreal Engine, AURELION from dSPACE is a commercially available solution that enables car manufacturers to comprehensively test and validate their software and hardware for autonomous vehicles. In this talk, Caius Seiger, Product Manager for Sensor Simulation at dSPACE, explores the benefits of autonomous driving, reveals how autonomous cars work, and explains how AURELION integrates data from camera, radar, and LiDAR sensors for precise environment simulation.You can also read about how dSPACE is driving advancements in autonomous vehicle testing in our Spotlight.
The World is Your Canvas: Building 3D Global-Scale Real or Imaginary Worlds
In this panel, experts from the geospatial data world—including representatives from Cesium, Esri, Maxar, and blackshark.ai—share their experience of development with Unreal Engine and look ahead to what the future brings. Among the topics discussed are the wide range of use cases for representing worlds digitally, recent changes to the geospatial world, and ways that the ingredients these companies bring to the table can be amalgamated into different recipes to solve the various challenges that end users face.
All Roads Lead to the Metaverse
In this session, Red 6's Founder & CEO Daniel Robinson shares a fascinating and motivating story about what sparked his idea to create hologram fighter jets for training—including Hollywood movies such as Top Gun, Iron Man, and Ender's Game and his real-life experience as a fighter pilot—and how that led to creation of the world’s first metaverse in the sky. He also reveals how a serendipitous meeting with a famous face led to a collaboration with Disney.
Large-Scale Environment Capture for the World's First Hyperreal Wingsuit Simulator
Join Capturing Reality Technical Product Manager Tomáš Mišura and Metatexel Co-Founders Ryan Whitehead and Joe Robbins to find out how photogrammetry solution RealityCapture and Unreal Engine 5 were used to reconstruct an exact 3D digital double of western Utah’s Notch Peak. After months of processing, the result yielded a dataset with a staggering 16 billion polygons, thousands of parts, and thousands of 8K textures.
The Next Digital Twin is...Earth!
Imagine using every inch of planet Earth as the sandbox for your game, simulation, or scouting project, with or without VR and AR in the mix. In this session, Maxar’s Dan Nord and blackshark.ai’s Michael Putz reveal how a partnership between their companies is seeing artificial intelligence being used to convert best-in-class satellite imagery into a massive photorealistic 3D digital twin. With the ability to access that data in Unreal Engine 5, the entire Earth is open to developers. Who knows where they will go? The sky’s the limit.
Learning to Fly: CAE’s Pivot to UE5 for Next-Gen Flight Simulators
CAE trains over 135,000 pilots annually using digital solutions in support of its single mission: making the world safer. In this presentation, Marc St-Hilaire, Vice President Technology and Innovation at CAE, describes how the company intends to stay at the forefront of digital immersion with the introduction of CAE e-Series MR Prodigy Visual System, a new product for aviation training based on Unreal Engine 5. He reveals the benefits of pivoting to this platform, and talks about some of the outstanding challenges the simulation industry faces and the roadmap for solving them.You can also read our Spotlight for details on CAE’s decision to move to Unreal Engine.
As well as focused content for simulation, automotive, architecture, games, and media & entertainment, Unreal Fest 2022 also featured many presentations that are of interest across all industries. You can see all the sessions on our event page. And don’t miss additional simulation stories released in conjunction with last month’s I/ITSEC event. We hope you find them informative and enjoyable.
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