Baek Byung-yeul is a journalist at The Korea Times focused on cultural content, including films and cultural events in South Korea. You can contact him at baekby@koreatimes.co.kr to share your insights.
'Unity extends its reach beyond games'
Suzie Kim, country manager of Unity Technologies Korea / Courtesy of Unity Technologies Korea
By Baek Byung-yeul
By Baek Byung-yeul
Unity Technologies is a U.S.-based game engine maker with a user base of around 7 million. The firm has been expanding its footprint in non-game businesses, amid rapid industrial changes in manufacturing and ICT sectors, the head of the firm's Korean unit said.
“Unity engines have been widely used in the game industry. But, as more companies are seeking to adopt advanced technologies to save on costs and improve development processes, more and more companies have decided to adopt our engine,” Suzie Kim, country manager of Unity Technologies Korea during an interview with The Korea Times at the firm's Korean headquarters in southern Seoul, Tuesday.
Unity has led the game making engine business. More than 40 percent of the world's top 1,000 companies have produced games using the Unity engine as of the fourth quarter of 2018.
“Many people had underestimated the power of the Unity engine, questioning how the tool used in game making could be applied to other industry sectors. However, the Unity engine has many different features ranging from a physics system that helps in-game characters smoothly move around, to graphics technology,” she said.
In the non-game sector, the engine has been used in film, ICT, car manufacturing and other manufacturing industries. For example, Kim said its engine has helped carmakers effectively shorten the car making process.
“When applied to the car manufacturing industry, carmakers are using our engine to produce a virtual reality (VR) mockup of their vehicles. They said they changed the process of making a mockup as it usually takes about three months and costs about 150 million won ($133,000) to build a life-size clay model. Now dozens of researchers can share their opinions and check what is right or wrong with their vehicles, by wearing a VR headset,” she said.
The firm has also been cooperating with Korean companies. SK Telecom developed its VR service, Oksusu Social VR, using the Unity engine. Kia Motors used the engine to produce its augmented reality (AR) owners' manual and the country's largest furniture company Hanssem also came up with an AR service, using the engine, to enable customers to place furniture in a virtual space.
The latest collaboration with a Korean firm came in February as Samsung Electronics announced its Galaxy S10 will offer an enhanced gaming experience as the premium smartphone is optimized for the Unity game engine.
“Many companies are trying to digitalize their manufacturing environments. For the digitization they desire, visualization is the first thing to be proceeded. I cannot say the Unity engine is a perfect tool because there is no such thing yet. But the Unity engine can definitely boost the digitalizing process,” Kim said.
Kim said the firm's goal of 2019 is to secure more clients in various industrial fields while continuing to increase its market share in the game industry. “The game industry has always been the most important one for us. But we are also trying to secure more user bases in other industrial sectors,” she said.