Last week, on Wednesday 20th July, the Unreal Engine Enterprise division held a special event in the centre of London that saw 150 delegates, and more than a dozen Unreal Engine development partners, get together to share and experience how Unreal Engine real-time technology is being used outside of the games industry.
The event, which was titled Unreal Engine: Build London ’16, was held at Skyloft on the 28th floor of Millbank Tower, overlooking the River Thames in London.
Our invited guests arrived in time for a leisurely networking lunch and stunning views of the sun-drenched capital, before taking to their seats in the theatre area for exclusive talks on how Unreal Engine has been used to create amazing experiences.
We were privileged to have as our presenters: Solomon Rogers (CEO & Founder, REWIND) – VRX Beyond Games
Becky Power (Creative Director, Mindshare) and Steve Jelley (Director, Hammerhead VR) – Feel Wimbledon: Emotional Storytelling in VR
Daniel Sproll (CXO, Realities.io) – Putting the Real in Virtual Reality
Stephanie Bruning (Global Marketing Director, Framestore) and Alexander Rea (Creative Director of Technology, Framestore) – Field Trip to Mars
They each took the assembled audience through their respective projects, and gave in-depth looks at how they managed to take the user (or users) on their own unique journey. We’ll be making the full event videos available to everyone over the next few days so that you can also gain an insight into their thought processes and technological achievements.
The final part of the afternoon, ahead of the much anticipated hands-on sessions, focused on a panel, looking at which games technologies and thought paradigms are also relevant within an enterprise environment.
Our panel was hosted by journalist, and Editor-in-Chief of Serious Games Industry, Ronnie Dungan, who welcomed on stage Tom Burton (Interactive & Tech Lead, BBC Studios), Hervé Fontaine (VP VR B2B and Business Development, HTC), Mark Rein (VP and Co-Founder, Epic Games) and David Weinstein (Director of Enterprise VR, NVIDIA).
As the panel’s thoughts and opinions reverberated in our ears, it was time for our VIP guests to get hands-on with a number of examples of enterprise use of Unreal Engine.
Ranging from architectural visualization solutions through to immersive VR horror experiences, by way of real-time car configuration and a personal musical journey hosted by Icelandic artist Bjork, there was ample chance to experience first hand the power of real-time, and to witness the solutions that Unreal Engine is currently providing to many of our development partners.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our partners and developers who attended Build London ‘16 and made it so special.
A full list of our partners, and the projects that they were showing at the event, are detailed below:
- ABE (Hammerhead VR) - A cinematic, narrative-based horror experience that blurs the lines between traditional storytelling and real-time interactivity.
- Battersea (Cityscape) - An amazing visualization of the regeneration of the iconic Battersea PowerStation, London.
- BBC Home: Immersive Spacewalk Experience (REWIND) - A fully interactive and award winning VR experience. This is a collaboration between BBC Science, BBC Learning and BBC Digital Storytelling and REWIND and sees the user transported into low Earth orbit to experience the ultimate space walk.
- Bullet Train (Epic Games) - The critically-acclaimed VR game demo for Oculus Touch. You’re on a train. With guns. Immersive and heart pumping in equal measures.
- First Class Flight (Neutron VR) - A stunning VR aircraft cabin experience that may, one day, be the way that we choose our in-flight seating and experiences.
- Interstellar Virtual Reality Experience (Framestore) - The awe-inspiring world of Christopher Nolan’s cinematic masterpiece Interstellar, experienced through immersive VR.
- Jaguar Feel Wimbledon (Hammerhead VR) - The VR experience that brings Wimbledon alive through the eyes of Olympic and two-time Wimbledon champion, Andy Murray.
- McLaren 570S (Epic Games / McLaren Automotive) - A real-time retail configuration prototype, with stunning visual rendering as befits one of the world’s most elite and iconic supercar brands.
- McLaren (Scaleable Graphics) - Live cloud streaming of Unreal Engine. A world first.
- Notget (REWIND) - A groundbreaking virtual reality experience music piece for Notget, a single from Björk’s 8th studio album Vulnicura.
- Palau Blaugrana, FC Barcelona basketball arena (Soluis) - A VR architectural visualisation experience that takes the viewer into the heart of this stunning arena.
- Radisson Red Hotel (Soluis) - An inspiring hotel interior experience with incredible visual acuity and attention to detail.
- Realities (Realities.io) – Explore real-world places and locations that have been painstakingly re-created through the use of photogrammetry and LiDAR.
- Toyota 360 Showroom (Rotor Studios) - The world’s most-advanced consumer car configurator that is currently in every Toyota dealership in Australia.
- VR Funhouse (Nvidia) - A virtual carnival, full of fun and games that leverages next-generation Pascal-class graphics cards.
- Zen Garden (Epic Games) - Metal-enabled iPad demo that pushes what is capable on mobile computing devices.
