How Game Development Technology Can Assist in Visualization Challenges

Arnfield, Niall (2020) How Game Development Technology Can Assist in Visualization Challenges. Masters by Research thesis (MSc), Manchester Metropolitan University for the degree of Master of Science (by Research).

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Abstract

Research has shown that product configuration is becoming an increasingly common aspect of commercial sales, where previously it would have been an advantage that sets your products apart from competitors, it’s now becoming normalised as a baseline service offered to customers. Product configurators are notoriously difficult to develop, often requiring mass amounts of content and data. Larger businesses with resources to spare can afford to take on the risks associated with developing a product configurator, but medium and smaller sized businesses often cannot, and so find themselves at an increasingly larger disadvantage. This study aims to investigate whether game technology can mitigate or remove some of the development risks associated with developing a product configurator. Building on existing work on product configurator development, it asks. Can game technology provide an advantage over traditional development solutions? And if so, how exactly does it improve on them Based on a review of the literature on product configurator development, it’s clear that traditional rendering solutions are fine if the products showcased feature low-levels of customisation. But if products exceed this customisation threshold, it’s evident that these practices cannot scale and so bottleneck production, making the investment and risk involved in continuing development too high. The results indicate that when using game technology, you can automate aspects of production, such as rendering and storage. The speed difference between traditional rendering solutions and game technology methods are considerable if implemented correctly. On this basis, it is recommended that game technology is used in place of traditional rendering solutions such as Blender, 3DS Max and other 3D rendering packages as the difference in production speed is immense and the inclusion of automating certain tasks outright removes certain tasks involved in the production of a product configurator.