Unreal Engin 5.8 isn't just for games - Facilities Operational tool

Unreal engine in general is a tool that is understated in industry in general. The applications are endless.

Highlights of the show. Full show link at end of post.

When you look at things like "revit" or "cad" or any other purpose built application, you understand what is used for and how it can be a tool for industry. Companies have been created around using these applications. I have come across these applications many time, but in specific, I have seen the utilized in the design of skyscrapers, arenas, shopping centres, among many. In discussions, utilizing CAD and Revit to assist the design and construction is basic. Many companies have wanted to convert the revit models into a Digital Twin - a virtual representation of a building and the facilities, an operational tool. If you have sat in a room with designers, constructors, and operators, the dream is alive - convert that Revit model to a digital twin. But here's the rub - it costs a fortune to do this. Not only that, but then operations has to somehow use this as a facility tool to operate their buidllings.

This never happens - it's too complicated, it's not intuitive, it has to constantly be updated and if you don't know Revit, good luck. But most importantly when they get a quote for this conversion, it becomes a non-starter - the dream of a digital twin dies on the vine. Now it's been a couple of years since I have seen the pricing float across my desk, but my gut (maybe I should dig a little deepr) is that it hasn't changed much...and oh the amount of work to this is rediculous.

In comes walking Unreal Engine. We looked at this years ago as a way to build a digital twin - an executable file (like a game) that an operator could use a joystick to walk through their site, see how the air is flowing, how systems are functioning. We actually built a prototype of our office that connected to an external data set to show the temperature in our office zones. It was built with the ability to connect to external data sets...and they could be live data sets coming from anywhere. Hard to convince people to try new things though :)

So the first question I got was, "yeah sounds great, but how much would it cost to build a virtual building that was exactly like the real thing?" - My answer should have been the name is "unreal" engine, but most people don't appreciate my sarcasm. Instead, I did some digging. I could get someone online (who knows where they live) who would do the design in Unreal Engine for dirt cheap, I mean dirt (note that this is all relative to the actual cost of doing it the way I have already described).

So the cost problem seems to have been solved.

Let's move on to the the physics associated with building plant equipment. Normally you would need calculations then run simulations and models to ensure that the systems were designed correctly. Then you would compare how the systems actually run against how the models were built. Let's take a different approach. Unreal Engine has plugins that (and we didn't get to test this but I am pretty sure that it would be fantastic) are called Niagra Fluids and Chaos Physics.

"Niagara Fluids utilizes grid-based solvers to simulate the natural properties of gases and liquids.[1, 2]

• Fire and Air: Fire is driven by thermal dynamics and buoyancy. When you add heat and density to a simulation box, the heated particles rise while heavier smoke cools and dissipates. It also generates dynamic turbulence. [1]
• Water: Liquids are simulated using the FLIP (Fluid-Implicit-Particle) algorithm. This calculates the velocity of fluids on a 3D grid and maps them to particles to create realistic splashes, waves, and flowing bodies of water that react to player collisions. []"

Chaos Physics and Environmental Effects Physical forces interact heavily with the environment. []

• Wind: Dynamic wind vectors can be passed through the engine, driving materials. The World Position Offset (WPO) calculates how leaves, flags, and character clothing bend and react based on wind direction and intensity. [1, 2]
• Air and Water Resistance: Character clothing and hair use Chaos Cloth physics which compute physical reactions like air resistance or getting weighed down in water directly at runtime. [1, 2]

Seems like this might just, "out of the box" remove or at the very least decrease the time it takes to model how a building should run and then compare that agains how it is running in real-time.

So the modelling part is fixed.

I have always believed that Unreal Engine is a game changer. Look at the Airport Simulations - this was 2021 btw. It takes real-time data connected to an exact or near-exact replica of the airport to show what is actually happening. It even shows car traffic flow (taxis) into the airport and out of the airport

So the real-time data connections and visualization components are fixed. What's left?

The possibilities are endless. Asset management, service work, etc. Imagine a technician going into a site, scanning a QR code and the room with detailed information about the type of equipment, installation date, data sets about how the equipment was running historically vs. how it running now, and directing the technician to the fix.

Now I am not saying that Revit or Cad are bad products - in fact they are incredible products that have stood the test of time and the "go-to" tools in the industry, so don't take this as a slight.

Full show