Unity Serious Games Gain Momentum With Award-Winning Applications, Industry Recognition and Military Certification

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - Mar 5, 2013) -  Unity Technologies, provider of the Unity multi-platform engine and development tools, today announced that Unity in serious games and virtual environments, from the military to education to medical, continues to grow in number and depth of applications and range of customers. Serious games projects made with Unity also swept the majority of the category awards at the recent Serious Games Showcase and Challenge at the I/ITSEC conference. Unity has also been reissued certifications by both the US Army and US Air Force.

"Unity has emerged as the engine of choice for a wide variety of industries creating and deploying interactive training, visualizations and serious games," said David Helgason, CEO and co-founder, Unity Technologies. "Our accessible platform and business model creates incredible new opportunities for developers -- both for small businesses and large organizations -- to create incredible interactive experiences that have real world applications. We are committed to continuing our work with forging the future for interactive applications outside of traditional games."

Organizations, including Booz Hamilton Allen, CliniSpace, Daden for BAE Systems, Designing Digital, E-Semble, Heartwood, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Real Visual, Serious Games, Vienna University, VIZERRA, and more, have chosen and implemented incredible new interactive experiences, simulations, and 3D content and serious games with Unity. To view a video reel demonstrating the power and innovation of some of these applications, please visit www.unity3d.com/sim.

For example, the NOAA leverages the power of Unity to create powerful data visualizations for science analysis, education and outreach. One of their products named TerraViz is a multi-platform interactive visualization tool that accepts information in formats like KML or data provided through web map services (WMS) and displays the results in a 3D environment. 

"By using Unity, we are able to seamlessly display millions of points of information at game-level frame rates," said Eric Hackathorn, data visualizations and games program manager, NOAA. "NOAA produces thousands of gigabytes of information every day, and Unity is a compelling solution for visualizing our big data."

(See below quote sheet for further comments from Unity customers).

Award-winning Serious Games
Announced at the recent Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC), four of the six category winners of the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge (SGS&C) were made with Unity. In addition, approximately 40 percent of both the overall submissions and finalists for SGS&C were Unity projects. The judging included more than 100 people from academia, government and industries around the globe for the official awards of the I/ITSEC conference that attracts 20,000 attendees each year. The top, award-winning projects using Unity technology were:

• Government: Cross-Competency Cultural Trainer by JKO-J7
• Student: Machineers by IT University of Copenhagen
• Mobile: DragonBox+ by WeWantToKnow AS
• People's Choice: C-ID Combat Vehicle Detection & Identification by AEgis Technologies

"Breakaway Games specializes in creating learning and serious games for commercial, education and government clients," said Jenn McNamara, Vice President of Breakaway Games, Subcommittee Member of I/ITSEC and Industry Lead for the Serious Games Showcase and Challenge Committee. "During our 15 years serving these clients we've worked with a number of game engines. What is unique about Unity is the ability to quickly create and iterate on game play concepts, which we have found essential in our solution development and client management. Unity's seamless blending of next-generation visuals, multi-platform support and ease of use have led to its rapid rise for serious games creation as reflected by the spike in Serious Games Challenge and Showcase submissions using Unity."

(See below quote sheet for further comments from Serious Games Showcase & Challenge winners).

New Certification
Further bolstering Unity's growth in simulation and serious games, the US Army and US Air Force recently reissued networthiness certification for Unity Pro. The updated Army Certificate of Networthiness (CoN) and Air Force Evaluated/Approved Products List (AF E/APL) accreditation now applies to selected Unity Pro 3.5 products and includes the Unity 3 Web Player, to display content developed with Unity Pro. Unity originally obtained these certificates in 2010 for Unity Pro 3.0.

Unity Technologies also recently completed work with representatives of Canadian National Defence to create a firewall compliant Closed Network Edition of the Unity Web Player, for use on Canadian secure networks. The Unity Closed Network Web Player was certified for use on Canada's DWAN defense network in the fall of 2012. Special licensing terms apply for using Unity on defense networks, please contact unitysim@unity3d.com for details.

QUOTE SHEET: Unity Technologies Customers and Award Winners Discuss Their Serious Games and Interactive Training Made With Unity

Heartwood
Heartwood empowers companies and organizations to build, operate, maintain and market their products by deploying 3D interactive training and 3D interactive marketing experiences anytime, anywhere, on any platform -- Web, PC, mobile and tablets. As a market leader, Heartwood is recognized as one of Inc. 500|5000 fastest growing companies and selected as 'Top Simulation and Training Company' by Military Training Technology Magazine. They support a strong customer base including Raytheon, US Army, US Navy, URS, L-3, Northrop Grumman, Goodrich, ATK, ITT, Honeywell, BAE Systems, US Secret Service, Cisco and many others.

"Heartwood relies on Unity's powerful platform to develop 3D interactive training applications for operations and maintenance training," said Raj Raheja, CEO and co-founder, Heartwood. "For our customers in the Defense, Aerospace, Light & Heavy Equipment, and Energy industries, multi-platform deployment is absolutely essential, especially mobile and tablets, making Unity indispensable to our development team."

C-ID Combat Vehicle Detection & Identification by AEgis Technologies -- People's Choice Winner of the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge at I/ITSEC 2012

AEgis Technologies' Combat ID™ is a military training game that is the first in a series of planned projects where AEgis will combine several core competencies to provide alternative solutions to train the warfighter. Combat ID was developed to meet the needs of AEgis' customers by offering a realistic and relevant option to traditional training methods through a high-quality, cost-effective and portable gaming application.

"AEgis Technologies is excited about the opportunity to bring over 20 years of modeling, simulation and training expertise to the gaming community," said David King, executive vice president of products, AEgis Technologies. "The Unity Game Engine enables us to put our serious games applications, like Combat ID, in the hands of those who can benefit from positive training in a gaming environment both for PC and mobile platforms."

"AEgis looks forward to a long relationship with Unity as a strategic partner both as a game development platform and as a host for our 3D model content for gaming," said Barlow Blake, business development manager, AEgis Technologies. "No doubt a measure of the success of Combat ID is due to the Unity development tools."

Machineers by IT University of Copenhagen -- Student Category Winner of the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge at I/ITSEC 2012
Machineers is a puzzle adventure inspired by Amanita Designs "Machinarium," to be released in late 2013 on iPad. In an industrial amusement park full of quirky robots and wonderful machines, you play Zola, the new apprentice at Hayden's repair shop. Make friends, earn yourself a reputation, and prepare yourself for the next challenge: build your own machines and become the best Machineer the world has ever seen.

"Choosing Unity 3D for developing Machineers was an easy decision, because it gives us all the creative freedom we need," said Henrike Lode, Educational Game Developer, Lohika ApS. "Everyone on the team, from artists to designers and programmers, regardless of their level of programming skills, can easily work together. We often use the Asset Store to find tools to help with level creation and animation, which is saving artists and programmers a lot of time and work. Being able to port our game effortlessly to Mac, PC and for web makes it easy for us to test the game with kids in many different scenarios. We basically never have to worry about when and where we encounter them. Now we are developing the full game for the iPad with a team of international people, collaborating across countries. Unity's asset server helps us see each other's progress and be closer as a team even though we are not sitting in the same room anymore."