Real time 3D gaming rules, OK?

Video game software developer Unity Technologies’ cross-platform gaming engine is where about half the new mobile games in the market are created. It’s also used in films and other industries such as automotive, engineering, etc. Andrew Bowell—Vice President-Product, Arvind Neelakantan—Head of Technology and Evangelism, Indian Subcontinent and Sharatchandra Aithal—Field Engineer talk about the myriad applications of the real-time 3D engine across Industry 4.0 and how it is democratising gaming.

Gaming gets really big on real-time 3D…

Neelakantan: Typically games have always been at the forefront of technology. Before it went mainstream, voice chat was already in games. If you look at VR-AR, the first applications came out in games. That gave us an advantage to be ahead of the curve when it comes to technologies that already exist in the industry. Now real time is definitely something that consumers are expecting to have, and games are also built in real time.

On Netflix, you're not watching something on the time that is told by your cable provider. You're watching it, when you have time. That is pretty much real time. You are watching based on your personal preferences, your customization. You're watching it whenever you like. That's a very good example of a real time technology. Real time 3D is where you are able to interact with the 3D model without having for it to render, without waiting for someone to tell you when it should be shown in front of you.

Bowell: Before the real time or dynamic era, it was static. In the previous generation, in the media, that is mostly the movies and games, there was an element of you had to kind of bake it, even in games. Now games were always real time in the sense that you're running around, driving a car etc. But a lot of times the environment, the background, table, things on the table would be static, because actual real time is hard. Think about all the maths, you have to calculate to make something move like it should in the real world. How do you simulate that? It's hard!

It's only in the last 10-15 years that computers have become powerful enough to calculate 60 times a second to make the world dynamic. We're moving into an era where things are much more dynamic. It's about smart technology, things that learn on the fly.

The application of real-time 3D gaming tech in multiple industries…

Neelakantan: Because of the versatility and positioning of what games have been doing all these years, the gaming 3D technology fits into many other industries and it's become like a polymath where everyone is using it. Automotive is a major user of real time technologies due to things like design review, collaboration, product design and consumer facing experiences. Architectural engineering and construction uses it in design, safety trainings and site walkthroughs. If you have ever been to a film studio you’ll know rendering is a huge cost in animation. But that has been brought down thanks to real time rendering. It is being used in defence, retail, healthcare and frankly many other places that we don't even know.

On being ready for the world of IoT, Industry 4.0 and Big Data…

Bowell: Looking at the Internet of Things (IoT), there’s a lot of data being generated by devices all over the world. Every room in a building could have monitoring sensors, like wall sensors and floor sensors. That's great, but what do you do with that data? We think of ourselves as a real time 3D platform. The way you can develop any kind of software for the Windows PC platform, you can develop any kind of real time 3D software using Unity. In Industry 4.0, there’ll be billions of events being generated in world of data and Unity is a really great place for these to come together and be may be made into something meaningful. We have the kind of the ability to compute this in real time.

Aithal: There is something called the Nine Pillars of Industry 4.0. We kind of have a segue into almost all of these pillars, so that you can get a better product. You can you can build anything from huge dashboards that are controlling a whole factory. Then there’s the use of digital twins. A digital twin is basically a virtual model of an actual physical model. How do you get the simulation done? There are multiple ways of doing it. You can get all the IoT sensor data streamed right inside the digital twin and it showcases everything you can do. After that you can do things like remote assistance, predictive maintenance and analysis of a lot of things.

All this is possible using our technology. This is the right era we're at to build a proper digital revolution. That's the reason why we're trying to push towards being a de facto tool that's could be used in Industry 4.0.

Neelakantan: A good example of that is, let's say you have you have an order to manufacture 10,000 units of a phone or even a car. So you want to configure your factory floor in such a way that it is able to efficiently manufacture those units. Now you don't want to place real machines in your factory to see if that's going to work. Instead, you can create digital twins where simulate factories and run your calculations before going ahead and getting your factory ready. That way you optimise your process before you even start creating something physically.

Bowell: When I was in university, I learnt a language where running it was so painful. It was hard to try to map the queues etc. However today the proposition is totally different and this is why gaming is so interesting. We can make it all almost drag and drop. I could simply model a factory floor or room with a mobile scan. You get this very quick ability for almost anybody to create a digital twin, do some simulation and suddenly everybody is that more efficient. It's not just the experts or the largest factories. It can just be for any size. That's really powerful and could transform an entire country.

The democratisation of game development, by the millions…

Neelakantan: A few years ago, if you had to make a game, it was a very difficult process, not just technologically but financially. You had to pay several hundred thousands of dollars even just to acquire the SDK (Software Development Kit) of an engine before you could actually start thinking about making a game. Unity was a game changer at that point of time where it provided the tool for anyone to download it. So if you're interested in making a game or telling a story, all you need is just a computer. You don't need millions of dollars to start investing in it. That is what democratisation of game development is all about.

When you're looking at game making, it’s confined to programmers, or those with some programming expertise. So you're leaving out a huge amount of people who are non-programmers who still want to make games. And that was another democratisation drive that we did two years ago. So artists could contribute to or even make games without having to write code. This has transformed into someone saying, “I want to make a VR application. I don’t want to write code, but just tell my story. I just want to make an app.” That further democratises not just games but goes beyond it.

Bowell: More than 2 million student learners are using Unity today. This is a growth market for us. We are providing that group the same technology as we do to professional developers. It's literally the same product. They don't need to pay a licence fee to use it. That means you you're learning on the same product that could potentially become a career in whatever industry you move into. So that’s true democratisation. We obviously charge professional developers for a SaaS model separately.

Aithal: We recently launched Unity for Simulation. If you didn’t have the right hardware available, you could just drop it into a simulation and get thousands of thousand instances of the same simulation fired up. Future applications can be many. Take mixed reality devices. Once you put them on, you're able to perceive what is there in real life with the digital information interlaced on it. 10 years down the road you may have contact lens with these functionalities. We have a tag called “Unity for all”. There are a lot of use cases that can be done. As a provider of tools, we believe that the world has creators. We want to give the best tools to the creators to make whatever they want to.

(The author was hosted by Unity Technologies at the event Unite India 2019 held in Kochi)