May 9, 2019

Interactive automotive visualization for self-driving Robocar wins the day for AltSpace

By Doug Wolff

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AltSpace Studio started out in 2012 with the goal of technical aesthetics in engineering. With offices in London and Moscow, their CGI videos and interactive projects have showcased everything from superyachts to spacecraft. 
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AltSpace specializes in industrial projects in aerospace, yachting, and automotive, with racing cars being one of the most prominent categories. One of their recent projects was for the FIA Formula E Championship, a race exclusively for electric vehicles. Another was for Roborace, a competition with a significant distinction—Roborace will include both manually-driven and autonomous vehicles.
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In Roborace, all teams will use the same physical vehicle, the Robocar, and each team will develop their own AI technologies and real-time algorithms to drive it. Naturally, automotive enthusiasts are eager to learn about Robocar’s design inside and out, and AltSpace was just the team to showcase its many facets.

AltSpace was commissioned to create a touch table presentation where visitors could interactively reposition the car to look at it from any angle, and remove layers to peek under the hood. The interactive experience, powered by Unreal Engine, garnered them second place in the Unreal Awards Manufacturing category.
AltSpace credits the team’s engineering background with giving them the right insights for the project. “We completely recreated the car in digital form from drawings and photographs, which was conducted in parallel with the creation of the car itself,” says Oleg Butov, Art Director at AltSpace. “The viewer can break down the car and study its power structure, the drive train, the sensors, everything all the way down to the NVIDIA processor.”
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AltSpace sees Unreal Engine as an important component in their business’s shift to automotive. “We always wanted to showcase our achievements and progress in the field of interactive experiences,” says Igor Voloschuk, CEO of AltSpace. “Using UE has played a crucial role in AltSpace’s development and opened an opportunity for creating sports car touch tables for Roborace as well as Formula E.”
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Designer Daniel Simon playing with Roborace touchtable

With their recent success using Unreal Engine, AltSpace sees themselves going deeper into real-time technology and branching out to new types of presentations. “Our passion for visualization has always led us to the point of outperforming ourselves, and we hope to retain this constant hunger for understanding and shaping what’s next,” says Voloschuk. “In the near future, we plan to explore blending solutions for live-action videos and broadcasts using UE.”


Want to create your own real-time interactive experiences? Download Unreal Engine today.