Unreal Architecture

Powerhouse Dallas architecture firm HKS is licensing a popular video game engine to wow potential clients

The new owners of the $1 billion Dallas Cowboys New Stadium could virtually tour the gridiron via animations made using the Unreal 3 game engine. HKS

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By Matt Vella

December 21, 2007 at 10:11 PM UTC

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To boost profits and help sell its large-scale projects, architectural mega-firm HKS is turning to, of all things, video game technology. The Dallas group, whose clients include Whole Foods Market (WFMI), W Hotels (HOT), JCPenney (JCP), and the Ritz-Carlton, and whose projects in construction total $19.7 billion, announced in October, 2007, that it had licensed Unreal Engine 3, a powerful image processing tool that will help its architects produce detailed interactive environments of future projects.

Made by Raleigh (N.C.)-based Epic Games, Unreal Engine allows developers to cut down the time it takes to create complex graphics and game play. Over the past decade the technology has been used in the production of best sellers such as Gears of War and Mass Effect, churning out increasingly sophisticated polygonal images of all types, from futuristic space stations to hyper-realistic blood and guts. Applied to architectural models, it is helping HKS generate additional revenues of $65,000 to $150,000 per project.