Microsoft today announced that it has acquired Simplygon, a company that develops 3D-optimization solutions for game developers and other industries that need to visualize 3D data.
Simplygon’s SDK is used by many major game development studios and the company recently expanded into the AR/VR market, too. Given Microsoft’s push into AR with its Hololens project and VR with Windows Holographic, it’s clear where Simplygon’s technology fits into Microsoft’s own roadmap.
“Simplygon’s technology and talent will strengthen our position in 3D creation, making it easier to capture, create and share in 3D,” Microsoft’s corporate VP for Next Gen Experiences Kudo Tsunoda writes in today’s announcement. “It builds on and extends our aspirations to empower a new wave of creativity with the Windows 10 Creators Update, Paint 3D and our online creator community at Remix3D.com.”
Simplygon’s technology essentially optimizes the original 3D data — be those CAD files or 3D scans — and then optimizes it for a specific use case and output target. For games, that could be Unreal Engine or Unity, for example. As for as these optimizations go, the company’s software can take a complex master model and then use its proprietary algorithms to reduce the number of triangles it takes to show this same 3D object, which reduces the work a graphics card would have to do to render it.