The FBI and other US agencies to utilise Epic’s Unreal Engine

by Ben Abbott at 5:26 pm on Wednesday, 28 March 2012

Although Epic’s Unreal Engine already boasts a huge client list - with recent success stories including Batman: Arkham City, Mass Effect 3, Bioshock 2 and Asura’s Wrath - it will now see the FBI and other US government agencies join the roster.

The heavyweight games technology will be used for training purposes, with Epic and new partner Virtual Heroes forming the UNREAL Government Network in a long term agreement to licence the software to “the departments, agencies and units of the U.S. and allied governments” via multiple platforms, from iOS to Xbox 360, PC, PS3, Wii U and browsers.

Details of the agreement - taken from Virtual Heroes’ website - can be seen below.

• The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) awarded ARA-Virtual Heroes a >$10M, multi-year contract under the Sirius program. The goal of the Sirius program is to develop serious games that result in better decision-making by teaching participants to recognize and mitigate the effects of their own biases when analyzing information used to make decisions.
• Virtual Heroes, in collaboration with the Duke University Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center, is creating an anesthesiology training application for Army physicians.
• Virtual Heroes is developing the UE3-powered HumanSim platform for medical education and training.
• The FBI Academy is using UE3 to develop a multiplayer crime scene training simulation to meet the needs of the FBI.
• A top five defense contractor and a national laboratory have licensed UE3 and UGN to address their needs for custom model integrations and visualization.

Dr. Michael Capps, president of Epic Games, said that they “recognize the growing market needs of our government customers and are excited to have Virtual Heroes provide a full spectrum of focused services and support using our game engine technology”.

Source: Virtual Heroes (via BBC)

- Ben Abbott

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