Volvo and Epic Games partner up to bring next-generation high-quality visualisation in your car

To offer its customers the best possible user experience, Volvo is bringing photorealistic visualisation technology into its next generation of electric cars through a new collaboration with Epic Games. The companies are teaming up to bring Epic’s Unreal Engine game engine into upcoming Volvo cars.

Epic Games is a leading interactive entertainment and software company probably best known for Fortnite and also develops Unreal Engine, widely considered to be the most advanced real-time 3D creation tool used in various industries beyond games.

Volvo 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.

Volvo customers will be able to encounter impressive, high-quality graphics on those displays. Sharper renderings, richer colours and new 3D animations are merely some of the first steps in pushing the graphical envelope.

Henrik Green, chief product officer at Volvo, says: “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. Running Unreal Engine in our cars enables this and makes it even more enjoyable to spend time inside a Volvo.

The Unreal Engine runs with third generation Snapdragon Cockpit Platforms, and 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.

Heiko Wenczel, Epic Games’ Director of Automotive and HMI for Unreal Engine, says: “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. 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 the new graphics is the new all-electric flagship model that Volvo 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.

In addition, the Swedish firm sees more opportunities for Unreal Engine to advance other areas of technology within the range to explore new applications and other software-driven technology platforms.

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