Volvo announces partnership with Epic to create a new ‘photorealistic’ graphics
Volvo has announced that it will collaborate with Epic Games to create a new ‘photorealistic’ graphics using Unreal Engine, bringing “photorealistic visualization” to the next generation of electric vehicles. Since it was first applied to first-person shooters in 1998, Unreal Engine has not only been used in various types of games, but has also been gradually adopted by other industries, such as the film and television industry, and the automotive industry is a new direction that Epic has been involved in recent years.
According to The Verge, at the heart of the Volvo-Epic Games collaboration is the “human-machine interface (HMI)”, and Epic Games will help Volvo build a platform on which Volvo’s engineers can design software to improve the HMI, at the same time, the safety level of the vehicle needs to be maintained.
“This technology gives us the capability to create responsive, really high quality visuals that we can play with and layer in information, create realistic representations when needed, all of those kinds of things,” said Thomas Stovicek, the head of user experience at Volvo Cars. “So it’s really about creating the next generation of HMI for our customers.”
The automotive industry seems increasingly attractive to Epic Games, and in addition to higher revenue, vehicles are easier to render realistically than characters. At the same time, modern cars are mainly designed in software, and they are equipped with infotainment center systems with large touchscreens and digital interfaces, which are platforms that Unreal Engine is good at. Before Volvo, Epic Games cooperated with GMC to provide HMI software for the 2022 Hummer EV. In the future, Epic Games may take a step closer to the automotive industry.
