What are Digital Twins?
A digital twin is a 3D model representing a physical entity like a building or a city contextualized in a digital environment, providing a means for analyzing and optimizing the space. When live data from the entity is fed to the digital environment, a.k.a. the digital twin, it functions and moves just like the real building, also providing constant visual feedback on the various process setups. The collected data can be used to calculate various metrics to analyze and predict efficiencies. Let’s take a look at what Unreal Engine can offer to enhance a digital twin experience.
Why Unreal Engine?
While digital twins can be visualized in many ways and on many platforms, including a regular data dashboard, Unreal Engine can take the twin experience to a whole new level by opening up endless possibilities to interact with the twins.
These spaces can now not only be visualised, but can also be interacted with, moved around in, and analyzed on virtually any device that supports a browser, thanks to its built-in Pixel Streaming capabilities.
Digital Twins and Unreal Engine
Digital Content Creation (DCC) software like Maya, Blender, or 3ds Max has built-in scripting capabilities, allowing users to control 3D models through scripts. We’ve always had the tools to create digital twins with the help of such applications. Until the introduction of applications like Unreal Engine and others alike, the barrier to entering the digital twin world was high, requiring a great deal of time and effort to create and maintain them.
This is where Unreal Engine swoops in to save the day. With its real-time technologies, setting up and maintaining digital twins is easier than ever, resulting in a well-designed application that is not only visually appealing but also easy for anyone to use and navigate.
Unreal Engine is already being used for a variety of digital twin projects in collaboration with various companies and indie researchers, creating projects ranging from data visualisations to digital twins of cities, airports, and more. It provides excellent support for high-fidelity and realistic 3D models, imitating real-world environments and allowing for more complex visualisations, like digital cities, with ease.
Possibilities
With Digital Twins on the rise and Unreal Engine’s provision of its incredible support and plethora of features, there are endless possibilities in this realm.
A few of such possibilities are as follows:
- Data Visualization and Interactivity
Representing a live model and its data in Unreal is as easy as ever and helps in visualising all this live data provided by live sensors.
- AR/VR –
Live entities and cities can now also be visualised through Virtual and Augmented reality, striving to provide a more hands-on experience in the digital twin realm. Many Indie researchers are already working on emergency response systems and simulation of various devices and facilities to provide training in case of emergencies or repairs.
- Pixel Streaming –
Pixel Streaming is a technology, initially adopted by Epic Games, that allows users to play games from anywhere and any device without having to install the application on their devices.
With this technology, Unreal Engine enables streaming digital twins applications on virtually any device, including touch devices, with no hardware restrictions as such.
- Scale –
While larger models and entities like cities were traditionally impossible to work with due to their sheer size, Unreal Engine has made it easier to work with such models making use of the various optimization methods it provides. Unreal can render and visualise models of any scale with ease and setting them up is just as simple as always.
Simulation like never before:
While digital twins can be defined as just a digital replica of an entity that can be monitored, they’re also so much more than that. With applications like Unreal Engine and Unity, these twins can also be used to simulate various scenarios without needing to be present in the actual space.
Such twins can help in training new facility managers in managing the building better and can help provide safety and emergency response training and various other what-if scenarios effectively.
How has it impacted the industry?
Though Unreal Engine and Digital Twin work well together, they’re not quite at the plug-and-play stage yet. But that doesn’t stop digital twins, with the help of a tool like Unreal Engine, from reaching any business or industry with the superb visualisation abilities provided.
We’re starting to see various industries adopting digital twins in almost every sector, from city planning to product development and factory simulation, to name a few. Unreal Engine is a key piece of software that exists to revolutionise what Digital Twins once was and is taking it to a whole new level every step of the way.
