Qualcomm and Epic Games are collaborating to bring Epic Unreal Engine to Snapdragon Digital Chassis.
Epic Games is much more than its name would lead you to believe. Epic’s Unreal Engine provides the foundation for some of the most popular games ever built, including the company’s Fortnite, but it’s also becoming the foundation for visualizing AI-powered worlds. For example, Unreal and Nvidia are collaborating to change the face of virtual film and television production. Epic isn’t stopping there, putting Unreal in a position to change the way cars are designed and operated.
Qualcomm and Epic recently announced a collaboration that begins a new chapter in Unreal’s growing influence in automotive design, user experience, and interior systems. Through this partnership, Unreal Engine will be pre-integrated and optimized for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Cockpit platform, which is part of the company’s Snapdragon Digital Chassis solution. This allows automakers to offer scalable and customizable solutions to enhance the human-machine interface in their vehicles.
Bringing Unreal to Qualcomm Digital Cockpit
The collaboration with Qualcomm marks the first time that Unreal Engine is directly integrated into Qualcomm’s automotive platform. This joint capability will enable automakers to create advanced in-vehicle visualizations, from customizable 2D and 3D displays to interactive interfaces. These visualization capabilities enable real-time feedback, allowing automakers to quickly iterate and refine in-vehicle experiences during development.
Qualcomm’s strength in the mobile phone and, more recently, AI PC industries is well understood. However, its growth across the automotive market is poorly understood. The company has been providing automotive connectivity solutions for many years and has steadily built on this foundation to bring ADAS and digital cockpit solutions to market.
Automakers are responding. Qualcomm’s solutions are designed to be integrated into new vehicle platforms for virtually any automotive OEM. In its latest financial report, the company said it expects to generate approximately $4 billion in revenue from its automotive division in fiscal 2025.
Unreal Engine in the Automotive Industry
Epic’s partnership with Qualcomm is not the company’s first effort with the auto industry. Unreal Engine’s ability to render high-fidelity, real-time visualizations has made it an increasingly important tool in automotive design, prototyping, and virtual simulation.
Some of Epic’s notable initiatives include:
- audi used Unreal Engine for virtual prototyping, allowing the team to visualize, test, and iterate on vehicle designs without the need for physical prototypes. Audi also leverages Unreal for immersive customer experiences, including virtual reality showrooms.
- BMW uses Unreal Engine in its design process to quickly visualize and refine car designs. The solution is also integrated into the BMW iX Configurator, providing customers with a detailed and interactive 3D experience when customizing their vehicle.
- porsche used Unreal to enhance high-performance visuals in the showroom, develop a digital twin of the vehicle, and enable advanced simulation and testing during the design phase.
Unreal Engine’s core strength in real-time 3D rendering helps automakers visualize designs, simulate environments, and develop virtual experiences to enhance product development and customer engagement. Unreal Engine helps automakers streamline production, improve collaboration between design and engineering teams, and speed time to market by reducing the need for physical prototypes and enabling virtual iterations will help you.
Automotive manufacturers are incorporating Unreal into their vehicle HMIs and infotainment systems to improve user engagement by developing more responsive and visually appealing interfaces. Automakers are leveraging Unreal Engine’s immersive 3D capabilities to enhance the customer buying experience, from virtual showrooms and configurators to in-vehicle displays and infotainment systems.
Through partnerships and growing adoption of its technology, Unreal Engine has become an essential tool for automotive companies looking to enhance both their internal development processes and consumer experiences.
Analyst’s view
An automaker’s ability to deliver immersive experiences from the Snapdragon Cockpit is only as powerful as the tools used to create that experience. Tier 1 automakers, including many of Qualcomm’s customers, are already using Unreal Engine for design and prototyping, and in some cases within HMIs and infotainment systems. This makes collaboration natural for each.
This collaboration also benefits automakers, enabling a seamless experience from design to delivery, simplifying automakers’ workflows. By consolidating asset creation and enabling real-time collaboration, automakers can reduce production costs and accelerate time to market for new digital cockpit solutions. By leveraging collaborative technologies, automakers can reduce cost and complexity while improving the driver experience for their customers’ end users.
As the automotive world moves toward more connected, autonomous, and electrified vehicles, the importance and need for scalable and customizable solutions will only grow. Qualcomm and Epic each already have strong capabilities in enabling these solutions. Working together to unify experiences across design, testing, and customer experience gives each company a compelling and clear advantage, while also allowing them to play to their strengths.
The collaboration between Epic Games and Qualcomm is one of those rare initiatives where each partner and each partner’s customers benefit equally. That’s a powerful story.
