27 de junho de 2019

Build Detroit ’19 showcases real-time automotive design and visualization

Automotive & Transportation

Community

Design

Events

Manufacturing

Visualization

De Doug Wolff

On April 25 we hosted Build Detroit ‘19, our first-ever Unreal Engine automotive event in North America. Following on the heels of Build Munich ’18 in November and a custom build event at Boeing in August 2018, Build Detroit ‘19 was our most successful automotive event so far, with around 500 attendees including representatives from every major automotive manufacturer in the world.

Build Detroit ’19 featured a day of sessions showing all the best use cases for Unreal Engine in automotive design, manufacture, and presentation, to inspire the industry and promote discussion and networking.

Some of the highlights of Build Detroit ’19:

McLaren Speedtail configurator

There’s no car quite like the McLaren Speedtail, a sleek, teardrop-shaped car with superior aerodynamics, hand-built for each customer at a price tag of $2 million. McLaren demonstrated what Road and Track magazine calls “the world’s best car configurator” for the Speedtail, which buyers used to personalize their vehicles onsite at the company’s headquarters in the UK. Only 106 of these stunning vehicles were made available, and all are spoken for.

The configurator builds on McLaren’s prior work with Unreal Engine and Datasmith, which was outlined in the white paper Accelerating Data Conversion and Visualization last year.

More demos from industry leaders

Pablo Selener from Tesla showcased a UE4 project that their Visualization team created for the new Model Y. They were able to create a VR test ride in just two weeks from start to finish, just in time for a press event where journalists took a spin.

The Ford Explorer VR demo gave attendees both visual and physical cues for a full driving experience, as viewers sat on a platform that simulated the Explorer’s motions while driving. The Ford Explorer experience is an example of a VR sales tool that auto makers will likely implement in showrooms in the near future.

In addition, Uber presented their latest work in autonomous vehicles.

Epic Games lab in Detroit

At Build Detroit ’19, Epic Games announced it will be opening a lab in Detroit as a hub for the automotive community. The proposed lab will include a major demo area, a training area, and a design/thinking work space, along with Epic personnel specializing in development and support for automotive and industrial solutions. No location or official date has been announced yet, but Epic hopes to open the lab by the end of 2019.

Be sure to check out the video and catch the excitement of a live Build event. If you’d like to be invited to these events in the future, or hear more about the Epic Games lab, sign up for the newsletter on our Automotive industry page.