Spotlight
March 9, 2026
Racing into the future: How UE5 powers the E1 raceboat championship broadcast
Broadcast to over 230 territories around the world, E1 is the world’s first all-electric raceboat championship, part of a growing trend of new emission-cutting race series that includes Formula E.As well as featuring exciting close racing, E1 promotes sustainable technology, and features teams—owned by celebrities and athletes from sports and entertainment—with two pilots, one male and one female, who compete in genre races throughout the season.
Racing takes place in iconic locations worldwide—like Lake Como, Miami and Monaco—using all-electric boats called E1 RaceBirds that are designed to fly above the water on hydrofoils.
The team behind E1 is well aware that to build the sport’s long-term fanbase, they need to engage younger audiences, and immersive digital experiences are key to that engagement.
Racing takes place in iconic locations worldwide—like Miami, Venice, and the Bahamas—using all-electric boats called RaceBirds that are designed to fly above the water on hydrofoils.
The team behind the E1 Series are well aware that to build the sport’s long-term fanbase, they need to engage younger audiences, and immersive digital experiences are key to that engagement.
Racing takes place in iconic locations worldwide—like Lake Como, Miami and Monaco—using all-electric boats called E1 RaceBirds that are designed to fly above the water on hydrofoils.
The team behind E1 is well aware that to build the sport’s long-term fanbase, they need to engage younger audiences, and immersive digital experiences are key to that engagement.
Racing takes place in iconic locations worldwide—like Miami, Venice, and the Bahamas—using all-electric boats called RaceBirds that are designed to fly above the water on hydrofoils.
The team behind the E1 Series are well aware that to build the sport’s long-term fanbase, they need to engage younger audiences, and immersive digital experiences are key to that engagement.
Building a digital twin of the race track in Unreal Engine
With a focus on crafting real-time, high-energy immersive worlds for younger audiences, Badass Studios is the perfect partner to deliver digital experiences that rival the intensity and thrill of powerboat racing.The team starts by creating a digital copy of the race environment, including the sponsor and partner assets, in Unreal Engine. As the real race starts, CG versions of the E1 RaceBirds in the digital environment track the exact same position as the boats on the water thanks to the mapping of live telemetry data onto the virtual track. The result is a real-time digital twin of the race.
“The race is going absolutely in parallel, with just 0.0018 seconds lag,” says Rosemary Lokhorst, Co-Founder and CEO of Badass Studios. “Using our BadassXR platform, we now have a live platform and environment to use in multiple ways, from broadcasting to live gaming.”
Courtesy of Badass Studios
When it came to picking a platform on which to build their digital twin, Unreal Engine was the natural choice.
“Unreal’s been the bedrock,” says Alexander Sangwin-Skillen, CCO and Co-Founder of Badass Studios. “There was just no question of where we wanted to invest our time and effort, especially in terms of acquiring talent.”
The team works on a tight timeline to turn virtual powerboat tracks into an expansive digital environment.
Not only must they deliver the large-scale virtual world at speed, but they also have to constantly evaluate how well it will render in real time. Lumen, Nanite, and Virtual Shadow Maps have all proven invaluable when it comes to maintaining the required cinematic quality.
“With Unreal Engine, we can really get a nice clear CG scene but still meet our constant 50 frames per second in broadcast,” explains Sangwin-Skillen.
The real-time nature of the engine is a lifesaver in a sport where things can evolve rapidly. “With Unreal Engine, we can build all these elements very fast and implement them on the fly,” says Lokhorst.
“With Unreal Engine, we can build all these elements very fast and implement them on the fly,” says Lokhorst.
The digital twin enables a variety of broadcast perspectives: top-down views, real-time boat positions, and seamless integration with real footage captured by E1 Studios who produce the global feed shown on the likes of CBS, ITV and DAZN.
By masking out the virtual track, the team is left with everything else—the branding, sponsorships, and tracking of the boats. This produces a ready-made augmented reality (AR) broadcast layer without the need for any additional setup—an AR layer that is rooted in the Unreal Engine environment and therefore stable and accurate.
“Unreal’s been the bedrock,” says Alexander Sangwin-Skillen, CCO and Co-Founder of Badass Studios. “There was just no question of where we wanted to invest our time and effort, especially in terms of acquiring talent.”
The team works on a tight timeline to turn virtual powerboat tracks into an expansive digital environment.
Not only must they deliver the large-scale virtual world at speed, but they also have to constantly evaluate how well it will render in real time. Lumen, Nanite, and Virtual Shadow Maps have all proven invaluable when it comes to maintaining the required cinematic quality.
“With Unreal Engine, we can really get a nice clear CG scene but still meet our constant 50 frames per second in broadcast,” explains Sangwin-Skillen.
The real-time nature of the engine is a lifesaver in a sport where things can evolve rapidly. “With Unreal Engine, we can build all these elements very fast and implement them on the fly,” says Lokhorst.
“With Unreal Engine, we can build all these elements very fast and implement them on the fly,” says Lokhorst.
The digital twin enables a variety of broadcast perspectives: top-down views, real-time boat positions, and seamless integration with real footage captured by E1 Studios who produce the global feed shown on the likes of CBS, ITV and DAZN.
By masking out the virtual track, the team is left with everything else—the branding, sponsorships, and tracking of the boats. This produces a ready-made augmented reality (AR) broadcast layer without the need for any additional setup—an AR layer that is rooted in the Unreal Engine environment and therefore stable and accurate.
Courtesy of Badass Studios
Reactive sponsorship placement with augmented reality
Badass uses AR in projects first and foremost as a means to provide visibility to sponsors in an environmentally friendly way.“We’re trying to be a sustainable series, so we don’t want to be floating huge, inflatable bits of advertising on the water,” says Laurence Boyd, Chief Content and Product Officer at E1.
Using AR, the team can avoid large physical advertisements in favor of digital branding integrated directly into the broadcast.
That also enables them to get creative in ways that would not be possible in the real world—using AR to place logos on buildings or dynamic objects in the race scene, for example.
It’s another area where the flexibility of a real-time engine comes into its own—the team can dynamically move the logos around the track, relocating ads mid-event for maximum visibility.
The digital twin lends itself to many other use cases beyond the AR layer and broadcast. At the event, the same digital twin is loaded onto on-site simulators with added game mechanics that enable fans to race in the E1 Championship against each other in multiplayer mode.
Courtesy of Badass Studios
Using the live telemetry data that’s fed into Unreal Engine via sensors on the boats, the players in the simulators can even race against the pilots competing on the water, live as the real event is unfolding.
“It’s such an incredibly cool experience to be taking part virtually in the race,” says Boyd. “You see the smile on people’s faces when they can compete with the athletes.”
The fidelity of the digital twin is so high that the team is now working on implementing genuine physics to enable the real powerboat pilots to use these simulators to train and hone their skills.
“It’s such an incredibly cool experience to be taking part virtually in the race,” says Boyd. “You see the smile on people’s faces when they can compete with the athletes.”
The fidelity of the digital twin is so high that the team is now working on implementing genuine physics to enable the real powerboat pilots to use these simulators to train and hone their skills.
Courtesy of Badass Studios
To Fortnite and beyond
Fusing sustainability, technology, and creativity, E1 is part of a new wave of sports squarely targeted at younger audiences.
The decision to marry the excitement of high-speed powerboat racing with immersive technology is a clever one, evidently designed to appeal to these youthful tech-savvy fans.
Unreal Engine has been pivotal in delivering on this strategy.
“Unreal Engine has been very good for us,” says Lokhorst. “We’ve been able to create things at great speed and exceptional accuracy. We want people to experience a race in various ways, from broadcasts to live gaming—and then as a proper game on the marketplace.”
As well as preparing to evolve the E1 experience into a fully fledged video game, Badass has started to integrate E1 content into Fortnite, enabling players to pilot E1 RaceBirds around Fortnite islands.
From broadcast graphics and AR to simulators and games, it’s clear Badass Studios is getting a lot of bang for its buck out of its digital twin.
With Unreal Engine powering its immersive sports experiences, the studio is leading the charge into an exciting future where fans don’t just watch sports spectacles—they take part.