Tech

“We are very excited to provide blackshark.ai’s High-Frequency Mapping and Change Detection capabilities as a fully integrated service through the AWS European Defense Accelerator very soon,” said Michael Putz, CEO of blackshark.ai.

The acceleration of the first cohort of 13 startups is intended to elevate energy resilience, secure information sharing, sensing and decision making, and quantum and cyber resilience for mission-critical needs for land, air, maritime, space, and cyber domains in Europe.

The good news is always delightful to share: blackshark.ai and our joint product with Maxar Technologies, SYNTH3D, have scored several awards in the last few weeks.

Our relentless pursuit of excellence and commitment to innovation has been recognized and honoured as we proudly announce that our company has been bestowed with not just one but three prestigious awards for our groundbreaking product and unwavering dedication to advancing the field of geospatial intelligence and artificial intelligence (AI).

With immense pride and enthusiasm, we would like to take a moment to celebrate this achievement and express our sincere gratitude to all those who have supported us on this incredible journey. Especially to the ones behind the wheel – our rockstar team!

The first of the accolades we want to highlight is the highly coveted Auggie Award for the “Best Use of AI”. This award recognizes the exceptional innovation and impact of the product we created in partnership with Maxar, called SYNTH3D. SYNTH3D seamlessly integrates cutting-edge technology and robust analytical capabilities of blackshark.ai’s patented generative AI to extract 3D buildings from Maxar’s Vivid^TM imagery basemap. The latter is a global, cloud-free, virtually seamless view of planet Earth. It offers developers and creators a technology to simulate and visualise 3D environments representative of real-world locations where aesthetics and performance are critical to commercial applications. This 3D digital twin is available in a visually pleasing and highly compatible format that is representative of the geographic and building features of a given area.

Furthermore, SYNTH3D has been honoured with the 2023 AI Breakthrough Award for “Best Overall Use of AI for Virtual Reality”, which showcases breakthrough companies, technologies, products and services in the field of AI around the world. The award further underscores our commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the virtual reality (VR) landscape with our advancements in AI-generated synthetic 3D world technologies.

SYNTH3D is a geotypical replica of all the buildings on the planet, along with vegetation, biomes, infrastructure, and more. SYNTH3D offers the power to utilise this existing representation of Earth to expand developers’ gaming, simulation, metaverse, smart city, or any other VR projects to the next levels at unprecedented speed and scale.

SYNTH3D is available on various platforms, including NVIDIA’s Omniverse and Epic Games’ Unreal Engine (currently in private beta), as free samples and in multiple formats, such as USD.

Lastly, we are delighted to announce that our exceptional team has been recognized with the “Born Global Champion”, awarded by the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber (WKÖ). This recognition pays tribute to the outstanding achievements of Austrian start-ups that are “born globals,” offer innovative products and services and show rapid growth. We are excited to be recognized for the relentless pursuit of excellence in research and development that propelled us to the forefront of innovation across the globe. This would not have been possible without the collaborative spirit, passion, and expertise that fuels our company’s success and drives us to continually raise the bar in the geospatial intelligence domain coupled with AI.

These three awards not only validate our commitment to delivering unparalleled geospatial intelligence solutions but also reaffirm our position as industry leaders and innovators. Current achievements inspire us to continue pushing boundaries, driving innovation, and harnessing the full potential of geospatial data to address real-world challenges across various sectors.

We extend our deepest gratitude to our clients, partners, and the entire blackshark.ai team for their persistent support, trust, and belief in our vision. We invite you to join us in celebrating these achievements, which can be seen as confirmations of the transformation of the ways geospatial intelligence is being leveraged with blackshark.ai technologies and services.

ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands, April 24, 2023 — Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim), a leading global developer of military simulation and training software, is pleased to announce a partnership with blackshark.ai, the developer of a 3D Digital Twin of Earth and a range of AI-based geospatial technologies. Together, they plan to deliver unprecedented realism in whole-Earth terrain generation through combing BISim’s Mantle ETM and blackshark.ai’s SYNTH3D™ geospatial solution.

“As we launch our partnership with blackshark.ai, we’re excited about the unprecedented quality of terrain that our customers will be able to experience. SYNTH3D™ paired with Mantle ETM’s support for multiple runtime engines will enable customers to leverage simulation like never before,” says BISim CPO Pete Morrison.

The collaboration between BISim and blackshark.ai will enable customers to acquire highly accurate recreations of real-world locations for mission planning, rehearsal or training based on little more than high-resolution satellite data. This aligns with NATO’s direction and global partners’ goals to accelerate defense training and simulation and improve multi-domain capabilities. BISim’s flagship product, VBS4, will be fully supported, in addition to other Mantle ETM supported runtimes including Unreal.

“With this partnership, any real-world location becomes available as a current and photorealistic 3D training environment. blackshark.ai and BISim are the perfect combinations for everyone looking for country-scale real-world mission planning and mission rehearsal environments,” says Michael Putz, CEO of blackshark.ai.

BISim’s Mantle ETM is a custom-built platform based on proven COTS components and expert design/development services for creating simulated terrain for training, mission rehearsal, visualization and terrain analysis. A Mantle ETM installation delivers a cloud-capable custom terrain pipeline that works with your data, processes, servers, and runtimes, integrating with your existing terrain capabilities or delivering a full end-to-end solution from scratch.

blackshark.ai’s 3D Base Globe, derived from high-resolution and current satellite data, is named SYNTH3D™. blackshark.ai’s proprietary format allows storing and using the surface of the entire globe offline and using it as a multi-domain, massive multiplayer-ready synthetic training and simulation environment.

 About blackshark.ai

blackshark.ai provides a 3D Digital Twin of Earth by extracting information from satellite imagery and reconstructing detected attributes in photorealistic 3D fully automatically. A scalable artificial intelligence builds the core of the blackshark.ai platform, detecting features globally with incredible accuracy and speed. A patented approach to 3D reconstruction, can store petabytes of data and render it in infinite detail in real-time, allowing for powerful visualization and simulation applications for government, geospatial intelligence, humanitarian relief, planetary management, autonomous driving and flying, insurance, smart cities and more. The blackshark.ai platform, backed by M12 – Microsoft’s Venture Fund, Point72 Ventures and provider of global space solutions Maxar Technologies, serves large clients globally with a team of 100+ people based out of Silicon Valley/US and Graz/Austria, Europe’s computer vision hub.

About BISim

Founded in 2001, Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim), a wholly-owned subsidiary of BAE Systems, Inc, is a global software company at the forefront of simulation and training solutions for defense and civilian organizations.

Globally, many hundreds of thousands of military personnel are trained every year using BISim’s high-fidelity VBS software products. More than 60 NATO and NATO-friendly countries, and over 300 integrators/prime contractors use VBS technology, many making significant funding commitments to extend VBS product capabilities. BISim’s customers include the U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, Canadian Armed Forces, UK MOD, French Army, Bundeswehr, Swedish Armed Forces, Australian Defence Force, New Zealand Defence Force and many major system integrators.

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Using advanced AI and patented technology applied to global satellite imagery, Blackshark has built SYNTH3D^TM – a 3D digital replica of all the buildings on the planet, along with vegetation, biomes, infrastructure, and more. Users of this technology have access to underlying semantic information about object properties like dimensions, geolocation, and materials to leverage in more precise simulation scenarios.

NVIDIA Omniverse is a computing platform built on the Universal Scene Description (USD) framework enabling the development of connected 3D workflows. Roboticists can train, simulate, test and deploy AI-enabled intelligent machines with increased scalability and accessibility. Autonomous vehicle engineers can generate physically based sensor data and simulate traffic scenarios to test a variety of road and weather conditions for safe self-driving deployment. Industrial teams can assemble and compose virtually integrated assets like factories and warehouses to achieve digitalization.

Developed jointly by Maxar and Blackshark.ai, SYNTH3D allows developers and creators to simulate and visualize 3D environments representative of real-world locations where aesthetics and performance are key to commercial and government applications. This 3D replica of the entire globe is available in a visually pleasing and highly compatible USD format that is representative of the geographic and building features of a given area.

Blackshark with NVIDIA is making free SYNTH3D samples of areas of the globe available to allow developers to experiment and prototype simulations leveraging digital terrain from Blackshark into NVIDIA Omniverse.

“We are excited about this next step in our collaboration with NVIDIA, and we believe our capabilities, coupled with the Omniverse platform, will empower developers to build real-world simulations with greater accuracy and ease,” said Michael Putz, CEO of Blackshark.ai.

The samples are provided in USD format, which is natively supported by Omniverse and can be visualized and used in the Omniverse environment. In addition to the samples of various regions in different sizes, any location on the globe can be easily provided for Omniverse with Blackshark.ai’s geospatial platform. The next step after the static USD exports will be to develop an Omniverse Connector, allowing streaming in the entire globe into Omniverse.

“Everything that moves will one day be autonomous, and everything that is autonomous will be simulated,” said Paul Cutsinger, director of Omniverse Exchange at NVIDIA.“The Blackshark 3D digital twin in Omniverse will unlock powerful scenarios and geospatial capabilities in the industrial metaverse for our ecosystem of developers and partners all over the world.”

SYNTH3D is widely used for various planning, simulation and visualization use cases by industries including energy, utility, city planning, gaming, and media and entertainment. Let us know more about what you plan to do based on SYNTH3D in NVIDIA Omniverse!

You can access the NVIDIA announcement on the NVIDIA Omniverse expansion and NVIDIA Connectors here: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2023/03/21/new-omniverse-connections-advance-3d-workflows

Image: Montepulciano exported in USD from blackshark.ai SYNTH3D

Image: Lafayette exported in USD from blackshark.ai SYNTH3D

Image: 3D model of an area in Maryland exported in USD from blackshark.ai SYNTH3D

Image: Lafayette exported in USD from blackshark.ai SYNTH3D

Developed through a partnership between Maxar and blackshark.ai, SYNTH3D allows developers and creators to simulate and visualize 3D environments representative of real-world locations where aesthetics and performance are key to commercial applications. This 3D digital twin is available in a visually pleasing and highly compatible format that is representative of the geographic and building features for a given area.

WESTMINSTER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Maxar Technologies (NYSE:MAXR) (TSX:MAXR), provider of comprehensive space solutions and secure, precise, geospatial intelligence, today announces the availability of SYNTH3D, a high-performance, geotypical 3D representation of the entire planet for gaming, simulation, entertainment, virtual reality (VR), smart cities and metaverse.

Developed through a partnership between Maxar and blackshark.ai, SYNTH3D allows developers and creators to simulate and visualize 3D environments representative of real-world locations where aesthetics and performance are key to commercial applications. This 3D digital twin is available in a visually pleasing and highly compatible format that is representative of the geographic and building features for a given area.

“SYNTH3D, created from Maxar’s Vivid basemap and blackshark.ai’s patented technology, will revolutionize how various industries build and interact with VR environments,” said Dan Nord, Maxar SVP and GM of Enterprise Earth Intelligence. “This digital twin will be useful in scenarios such as developers creating the next-generation video games, producers working on upcoming films, and businesses assembling simulation environments; the opportunities are limited only by the imagination.”

Blackshark.ai creates SYNTH3D by applying its patented generative artificial intelligence (AI) to Maxar’s Vivid imagery basemap, a global, cloud-free, virtually seamless view of Earth, with rich natural color and visual clarity. The AI extracts more than 1.4 billion buildings and procedurally generates them as 3D buildings. The buildings then have geotypical textures applied, meaning specific buildings may look different in the real world, but the overall appearance of the building height and façade reflect regional archetypes, creating a lifelike model. Delivered as a static export or rendered on the fly through numerous plug-ins and software development kits, SYNTH3D combines the global scalability, crisp aesthetics and high-performance rendering that next-generation simulations demand.

“Maxar’s Vivid imagery basemap supercharged our development of SYNTH3D by providing a global 2D view that we could transform into a beautiful 3D digital twin,” said Michael Putz, blackshark.ai CEO. “I’m looking forward to seeing customers and developers unleash the power of SYNTH3D across innovative use cases.”

SYNTH3D complements Precision3D in Maxar’s broader product portfolio, which provides a 3D digital twin for use cases in a variety of sectors. Precision3D offers highly accurate visualization with precise details and geospecific building heights and facades.

Maxar will demonstrate SYNTH3D and Precision3D at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, from February 27-March 3. Sign up for a SYNTH3D demo ahead of time, visit the booth (Hall 4 Stand 4B16), or download a product sample.

About Maxar

Maxar Technologies (NYSE:MAXR) (TSX:MAXR) is a provider of comprehensive space solutions and secure, precise, geospatial intelligence. We deliver disruptive value to government and commercial customers to help them monitor, understand and navigate our changing planet; deliver global broadband communications; and explore and advance the use of space. Our unique approach combines decades of deep mission understanding and a proven commercial and defense foundation to deploy solutions and deliver insights with unrivaled speed, scale and cost effectiveness. Maxar’s 4,400 team members in over 20 global locations are inspired to harness the potential of space to help our customers create a better world. Maxar trades on the New York Stock Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange as MAXR. For more information, visit www.maxar.com.

About blackshark.ai

blackshark.ai provides a 3D digital twin of Earth by extracting information from satellite imagery and reconstructing detected attributes in photorealistic 3D fully automatically. A scalable artificial intelligence builds the core of the blackshark.ai platform, detecting features globally with incredible accuracy and speed. A patented approach to 3D reconstruction can store petabytes of data and render it in infinite detail in real-time, allowing for powerful visualization and simulation applications for government, geospatial intelligence, humanitarian relief, planetary management, autonomous driving and flying, insurance, smart cities and more. The blackshark.ai platform, backed by M12 – Microsoft’s Venture Fund, Point72 Ventures and provider of global space solutions Maxar Technologies, serves large clients globally with a team of 100+ people based out of Silicon Valley/US and Graz/Austria, Europe’s computer vision hub.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements that reflect management’s current expectations, assumptions and estimates of future performance and economic conditions. Any such forward-looking statements are made in reliance upon the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results and future trends to differ materially from those matters expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements, including those included in the Company’s filings with U.S. securities and Canadian regulatory authorities. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, other than as may be required under applicable securities law.

San Francisco, Orlando, November 30, 2022. blackshark.ai, the developer of a 3D Digital Twin of Earth, announced the launch of a long-awaited plugin for the Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 during I/ITSEC, now available on the Unreal Engine Marketplace to the public. The blackshark.ai Globe Plugin will stream blackshark.ai’s SYNTH3D data, containing synthetically reconstructed 3D terrain, ground textures, buildings, infrastructure, and vegetation of the entire globe based on Maxar’s satellite imagery. The freely available plugin will allow users to generate their own applications in Unreal Engine for any kind of gaming, training, simulation, and visualization projects based on the real world.

blackshark.ai, best known for its global scale 3D reconstruction technology used in Microsoft Flight Simulator, applies artificial intelligence onto 2D satellite and aerial imagery to derive semantic object classification information and metadata to create a blueprint of the world that is then automatically transformed in photorealistic 3D. “Applications for these synthetic environments are infinite,” says Michael Putz, CEO of blackshark.ai. “While using the real world as a backdrop for gaming is one of them, most of our customers use blackshark.ai environments for all kinds of simulation applications, be it in the context of autonomous driving, humanitarian relief, city planning, or government efforts.”

While until now the company was offering custom integrations of its technology to mostly large clients and partners, the Globe Plugin for UE5 now gives the whole world into anyone’s hands. At its core, the Globe Plugin streams blackshark.ai’s SYNTH3D data in different LODs and contains 3D terrain, ground textures, buildings, infrastructure, and vegetation in an accurate, realistic, geo-typical, and regional-specific manner. The data for the 3D reconstruction is derived from Maxar’s Vivid global satellite imagery basemap and includes 1.5 billion buildings and over 30 million square meters of vegetation coverage. Buildings are generated at runtime carrying metadata, and building material attributes make it ready for physical simulation. Easy combination, conflation, and replacement with a user’s own georeferenced data is possible too. The blackshark.ai Airport Generator turns any airport ground charts globally into accurate 3D airport models, including runways, towers, markings, and light systems, introducing unprecedented opportunities for sensor simulation and officially accredited pilot training.

To give Unreal Engine users a jump start with the Globe Plugin, a 1.5×1.5 miles sized sample set of New Orleans is available to anyone for free. SYNTH3D is highly performant and data-efficient and thus enables massive multiplayer real-world metaverse applications, online or entirely network-free. “This is the beginning of a new era of simulation and training, available to anyone. We can not wait to see what users will build in Unreal Engine on top of the real world”, says Michael Putz.