Finalists chosen for Epic’s Big Data VR Challenge

Six finalists have been chosen for the Big Data VR Challenge, organised by Epic Games and the Wellcome Trust.

The competition aims to use the skills of those in the game industry and VR community to find ways to manipulate and use huge data sets generated by scientific studies.

A prize of $20,000 will be awarded to the best concept. The winner will be announced at the Develop: Brighton conference in July, where the project will also be on show.

The six chosen teams are Pi and Power, Soluis, LumaPie, Opaque Multimedia, Hammerhead VR and Skip the Intro.

They will also be working with science initiatives The Casebrooks Project, ALSPAC/Children of the 90s and The Genome Browser.

“The games industry has a unique ability to manage, manipulate and effectively present huge amounts of data, and that skill could potentially unlock a massive road block that has been confounding the science community for some time,” said Epic European territory manager Mike Gamble.

“Big Data is being amassed within thousands of companies and organisations. Gathering and collating all of this information is great, but without a meaningful way of analysing it, identifying patterns or sequences can be incredibly difficult. This Challenge, although relatively humble at this stage, could produce the tools required to grapple with the digital mountains of data that currently reside around the world today.”

You can find more information on the Big Data VR Challenge in the video below.