Volvo Automobiles and online game firm Epic Video games are partnering to enhance the position of the human-machine interface for Volvo’s subsequent technology of electrical automobiles.
In keeping with a press release Wednesday, Epic Video games will use a visualization instrument generally known as Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine — used to energy the favored online game Fortnite — will run on the HMI and supply “state-of-the-art graphics” and different key options reminiscent of multi-user scalability and high-speed, two-way information communications programs.
In an electronic mail to Automotive Information, Epic Video games spokesperson Richard Gotch stated that whereas different firms had been utilizing Unreal Engine for a number of years, the partnership marked the primary time Epic Video games is collaborating with a European automobile producer on an HMI challenge.
“Unreal Engine is already used in a roundabout way by a lot of the world’s main automobile producers, with functions starting from gross sales configurators to styling, engineering and manufacturing planning,” Gotch wrote.
In a press release Thomas Stovicek, Volvo head of person expertise, stated Volvo hoped the partnership would enhance driver-assistance and visualization applied sciences to offer “richer layers of data” to the motive force with out the “further distraction or stress” that include repeated notifications from the automobile.
“This new relationship is not nearly bringing astonishing game-quality graphics into our vehicles,” Stovicek stated. “It is about new methods of utilizing visible communications to clarify new applied sciences, to ship new buyer worth and to convey the skin world safely into the automobile.”
Stovicek additionally stated the partnership was a possibility to “present completely new features and providers” reminiscent of improved connectivity with different automobiles and the skin atmosphere.
Volvo expects to announce its first automobile utilizing Unreal Engine someday this 12 months.