In 2020, we were contacted by a wonderful development studio that focuses on 3D and VR development. They asked us to help them develop a time-constrained multiverse experience with real-time multiplayer for one of the largest cultural festivals on America’s West Coast — Burning Man.
The majority of the details about this collaboration are under NDA, but we’ll tell you what we can about our work within it.
Challenges & Goals
Organizers planned to hold the event in multiple virtual universes because of health and travel restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemics; iLogos was tasked with building one of those for Burning Man.
Clients wanted the real-time multiplayer experience to feel like a world where people can listen to DJ sets, watch performances, exhibitions, and movies, listen to lecturers, participate in other fun activities and, of course, talk to each other.
We had an extremely short timeline of 4 months to turn a single-player raw prototype into a multiplayer experience with rich content for a large audience. Our team of experts had to work tirelessly on the multiplayer aspect of the solution.
UI and real-time interactions had to feel frictionless and fast: the participants — the audience — had immense expectations for this project to feel like Burning Man, and we had to deliver.
The project was released into the world just in time for the event, along with other virtual universes Burning Man organizers decided to prepare.
According to the feedback we’ve seen and read, the participants enjoyed it a lot. Of course, virtual experiences won’t replace real-world interactions, but, along with other engineers and the organization that held the event, we did everything in our power to bring bright, exhilarating, and often radical cultural experiences to people’s homes, so they could have fun and stay safe in the pandemic.
People from Burning Man re-used our app later in 2021, so: we assume they thought it was good.
As we’ve mentioned, our team used Unreal Engine to build and fine-tune the real-time multiplayer experience for the project. They did a lot of debugging and optimization within its construction, making sure controls and interactions were easy and the environmental and technical constraints were as invisible as possible.
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If you prefer to contact us, use this email: bizdev@ilogos.biz