VOLVO CARS - Volvo Cars is bringing photorealistic visualisation technology into its next generation of electric cars through a collaboration with Epic Games. The companies are teaming up to bring Epic’s Unreal Engine game engine into upcoming Volvo cars, providing unparalleled high-quality graphics inside the cabin.
Epic Games is a leading interactive
entertainment and software company probably best known for Fortnite, one of the
world’s largest games. Epic Games also develops Unreal Engine, widely
considered to be the most advanced real-time 3D creation tool used in various
industries beyond games, and which will now be used by Volvo Cars for
developing digital interfaces inside its cars and rendering real-time graphics
in the car.
Volvo Cars is the first European carmaker to
use the Unreal Engine for development of the Human Machine Interface (HMI).
More specifically, it will initially focus on the Driver Information Module
(DIM), one of the displays inside the cabin that provide the driver with
relevant information and infotainment features.
In the next generation of Volvo cars, customers
will encounter impressive, high-quality graphics on those displays. Much
sharper renderings, richer colours and brand new 3D animations are only the
first steps as Volvo Cars developers continue to push the graphic envelope with
the help of Unreal Engine.
By coupling the Unreal Engine with the high performance computing power of the
third generation Snapdragon® Cockpit Platforms, the next generation of Volvo
cars will set a new standard in graphics and infotainment system performance.
As a result, Volvo Cars’ next generation
infotainment system will be more than twice as fast as its predecessor, while
graphics generation and processing inside the cabin will be up to ten times
faster.
"To offer our customers the best possible
user experience and contribute to a safe and personal drive, we need rich,
immersive and responsive visualisation inside our cars," said Henrik
Green, chief product officer at Volvo Cars. "Running Unreal Engine in our
cars enables this and makes it even more enjoyable to spend time inside a
Volvo."
“When you bring interactive, high-resolution
graphics running in real-time into the car, you open the door to a vast range
of new ways to inform and entertain everyone inside,” said Heiko Wenczel, Epic
Games’ Director of Automotive and HMI for Unreal Engine. “Volvo Cars’ deeply
talented design and product development teams have grasped this opportunity to
do something fresh that will keep evolving with exciting new features that take
advantage of the capabilities of Unreal Engine.”
The first car to contain graphics developed
with the help of Unreal Engine is the new, all-electric flagship model that
Volvo Cars will reveal later this year. That model is the first of a new
generation of all-electric Volvo cars as it aims to only sell pure electric
cars by 2030.
Further into the future, the company sees additional opportunities for Unreal Engine to advance other areas of technology within new Volvo cars, as Volvo Cars developers continue to explore new applications for this and other software-driven technology platforms while always keeping safety front of mind.
Volvo Cars has an ambition to develop half of
all the software inside its cars in-house by mid-decade and is recruiting
extensively within software development. By joining the company, coding talent
has numerous opportunities to work on exciting and groundbreaking new in-car
applications and platforms.
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