Charles River Analytics Awarded Epic MegaGrant

Charles River Analytics (CRA) has received a MegaGrant from Epic Games to develop and maintain its Virtual Interface for Real-Time User Control during Simulated Operations (VIRTUOSO) software development kit (VSDK) for Epic Games’ Unreal Engine.

The grant will support the extension of CRA’s existing virtual and augmented reality (XR) toolkit into the Unreal Engine ecosystem. The open source VSDK simplifies XR development, providing a free platform to push the boundaries of XR in healthcare, automotive, entertainment, and other industries.

“Our collaboration with Epic will marry VSDK’s usability with the broad access of Unreal Engine, helping to bring this incredible tool to the developer community,” said Elaine B. Coleman, Ph.D., Vice President of Commercialization at Charles River Analytics. “We’re excited to break down long-standing XR barriers by dramatically improving ease of use and cross-device interoperability.”

The VSDK eliminates the traditional roadblock of device-specific applications, allowing developers to design and build one application for a range of visualization, input, haptic, and tactile devices, and utilize a single API for interaction across all of these platforms. Originally applied to improve military medical training and education, the tool empowers developers to generate naturalistic interactions with content through its reaction system, providing a truly intuitive interaction space.