Booming industry
AI APPLICATIONS
“ We have reconstructed approximately 1.5 billion buildings and detected over 30 million square kilometres of vegetation ”
STEFAN HABENSCHUSS HEAD OF MACHINE LEARNING GROUP , BLACKSHARK . AI
Austrian startup Blackshark . ai , training an AI to generate a photorealistic 3D world from 2D satellite images .
Blackshark ’ s AI-driven technology enabled Microsoft ’ s Flight Simulator to display the surface of the entire planet in 3D – with over 1.5 billion photorealistic buildings – giving users an unprecedented immersive 3D flight experience and the largest open world in the history of video games .
With a team of 50 + AI specialists , geospatial engineers , data scientists , and real-time rendering developers , Blackshark developed a unique solution that uses the Microsoft Azure Cloud and AI to gain insights about our planet based on Bing Maps data .
“ We have reconstructed approximately 1.5 billion buildings and detected over 30 million square kilometres of vegetation ”, explained Stefan Habenschuss , Head of Blackshark ’ s Machine Learning Group , who described the game as ‘ a demonstration of the power of AI ’.
“ In Flight Simulator , we look at 2D areas and then find footprints of buildings , which is actually a computer vision task ,” said Blackshark Co-Founder and CEO Michael Putz , in a recent interview with TechCrunch . “ But if a building is obstructed by a shadow
Booming industry
The global gaming industry could be worth US $ 321bn by 2026 , according to PwC ’ s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2022-26 .
The expansion is being driven by social and casual gaming , after millions of people picked up their controllers to escape the boredom and isolation of the COVID-19 lockdowns .
“ People were looking for ways to both entertain themselves and maintain their social connections ,” says Bartosz Skwarczek , Co-Founder and CEO of online gaming marketplace G2A . com . “ Gaming has so often been painted with the wrong brush – stereotyped as being isolating and unsociable . However , the pandemic has shown this could not be further from the truth .” aimagazine . com 81