THE BUZZ: Epic Games has now established the Unreal Government Network, a new program where its Unreal Engine will power technology and platforms for a variety of government agencies.

EGM’s TAKE: Thought the main function of Epic’s Unreal Engine was giving us games such as Gears of War and Mass Effect? Think again!

Epic Games has now announced a new partnership with Virtual Heroes, a division of Applied Research Associates (ARA) that will develop and support Unreal Engine 3 technology for needs such as government programs and corporate enterprise networks.

“We 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,” said Epic Games president Dr. Michael Capps.

A few of the Unreal Government Network projects underway as a part of this are as follows:

• 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.

I’ve got to say—a highly-detailed and realistic FBI crime simulator could make one hell of a video game. Or, maybe that’s too much time spent watching Law & Order: SVU talking.

Source: Epic Games