CNN Uses Unity for Oil Spill Visualisation
CNN are using Unity to visual the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Allowing its readers to look at the surface or submerge to the seabed and look at what is happening, it is fascinating to see Unity being used in a non-gaming context.
Whilst this is certainly going to be great for Unity being picked up by other non-game institutions, I can’t help but notice that the CNN implementation runs a little poorly – is it my eye or are those models a little high poly? I may just be being a picky developer. Anyway, enough rant from me, go take a look -
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/gulf.coast.oil.spill/interactive/oil.recovery.3d/?hpt=C2
Another picky developer : Camera controls are inconsistent
Yea, they need some baked lighting love on some lower poly models,
Thanks for the tip.
No, it’s not just you — it was pretty bad performance… they probably got those models out of CAD or something so they were a bajillion polys each and had to do whatever they could to make it run. The interface around it was ALL jacked up when I viewed it in Chrome as well. I’m still quite pleased to see that there’s something on CNN.com created with Unity — while it’s not the best example, I think it’s really great that the install base is going to be bumped up by people checking this out who might not have seen Unity yet, but next time they do, they’ll have it installed already. I think it’s a good thing, even if it wasn’t a super example.
Agree Dunn, great to see Unity moving into interactive news. Great way to experience something in 3d, although this was a basic attempt, it certainly is an open door for improvement.