Blackshark.ai to provide semantic, photorealistic 3D digital twin of the entire planet as plugin for Unreal Engine
Blackshark.ai are the brains behind a vast open world and semantic 3D map as seen on TechCrunch. Accomplishing this global-scale 3D representation of our planet requires massive cloud computing, a novel approach to Artificial Intelligence for feature detection and procedural rendering technology, all combined creating a photorealistic 3D digital twin of our world, generated automatically from satellite imagery as input data only.
To make this patented technology accessible to empower countless industries, Blackshark.ai has chosen Epic Games’ Unreal Engine as the first game engine that they will support, putting the whole globe into anyone’s hands. The Blackshark.ai Globe Plugin provides access to a semantic 3D digital twin as well as to a realistic synthetic training and simulation environment. Both solutions unlock use cases for various industries and applications such as professional simulation and training, governmental geospatial services, humanitarian relief, metaverse innovation, insurance, real estate, AEC, and 3D mapping.
The AI-detected information about the terrain, buildings, infrastructure, and vegetation of the entire globe is streamed from the Blackshark.ai servers into the Globe Plugin for Unreal Engine, and is then rendered in real-time and can be used via an API at the same time. With the plugin, customers are able to combine their own worlds using Unreal and new architectural designs can for instance easily be integrated into realistic city scenes, or large-scale prebuilt scenes can quickly be combined with Blackshark.ai’s entire globe. At the same time, the semantic data representation makes it easy to filter for specific building aspects like building types, heights, or roof slopes or even simulating large-scale energy reduction effects through shading or insulation measures.
Digital Twin USA – Seattle rendered in the Blackshark.ai Globe Plugin for Unreal Engine as a semantic 3D map and as synthetic environment
The Blackshark.ai Globe Plugin is currently available in closed beta upon request. Several companies have already been integrating the Globe Plugin and SDK into their simulation tool chain in close partnership with the development team. General availability in the Unreal Engine Marketplace is planned for early 2022.
The plugin will be free and a demo version on the Unreal Engine Marketplace will contain certain example cities and areas including terrain, buildings and vegetation. Larger scale semantic 3D maps and synthetic training environments will be available on a yearly subscription model, with license fees depending on the size of the area of interest (city-scale up to the whole globe) and number of included data layers (terrain, buildings, vegetation, waterbodies, roads, etc.).
Blackshark.ai recently received an Epic MegaGrant, which will be used to accelerate the development of the plugin. More details about the availability of the Blackshark.ai Globe Plugin will be announced closer to the launch of Blackshark.ai’s “Global Digital Twin”.
Stay tuned — the whole world will soon be in your hands.
For further information or access to the current beta version of the Blackshark.ai Globe Plugin contact us via our contact form or via inquiries@blackshark.ai
