We are proud to announce that we have won an Epic Game Mega Grant with our Linked Common Data Environment (L-CDE) project. Epic Games and their product Unreal Engine are mostly known for computer gaming. 

 

With their MegaGrant, Epic Games supports game developers, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators, and tool developers doing amazing things with Unreal Engine to enhance open-source capabilities for the 3D graphics community. 

 Unreal Engine boosts L-CDE vision for the Construction Industry 

A CDE (common data environment) is generally used to exchange models, data and documents among project participants by putting them in one place (usually a cloud run by some provider). On the other hand, an L-CDE is a federated ecosystem that, apart from providing a shared data ground for the project participants, can provide meaningful connections between separated data entities with AI and semantic web technologies. It’s these connections that can leverage the real potentials of a common data environment. 

While there are already the first standards for contemporary handling of documents and some open-source tools for storage and data handling, we still lack the possibility for an open and powerful representation for 3D graphics in the project. With the integration of Unreal Engine into our existing setup (of Peer2Peer network and graph DB), we are getting one step closer to the idea of a Linked Common Data Environment for our construction industry. 

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Digital Twins take simulations and modelling to the next level 

With a digital twin of their existing infrastructure (as-built model), construction companies and authorities can simulate their BIM model ideas. The impact of decisions can be understood and extensively tested in advance. 

Retro BIM also gains additional benefit in early planning phases, when decisions are based on sound foundations, and the influence on the project is significant. 

In the future, open-source software solutions will be essential for planning and construction and even indispensable for long-term lifecycle operations such as facility and portfolio management. And we are proud that Epic Games is supporting this idea with the MegaGrant. 

Unreal Engine empowering digital replicas with astonishing accuracy 

A technology firm in Beijing has created a complete digital twin of China’s largest city. Please take a look at this outstanding video showcasing how they brought it to life with Unreal Engine: 

Check the video out