Making Digital Twins Playable, the talk
At Unreal Fest Stockholm 2025 a few months ago we talked about how digital twins should not stay static but become interactive and immersive. If cities, places, and environments are already being digitised, then the next natural step is to make them interactive, social, and playable.
This idea is the foundation of our ongoing project Playable Places.
We wrote about it here, and now the talk has been made available through Epic Games and their Unreal Engine Youtube channel.
Below, you can both watch the talk and read more about what we talked about during our presentation. If you want to discuss making digital twins or places interactive and immersive, contact us!
From static twins to playable worlds
Most digital twins today live inside GIS tools, reports, or visualisation platforms. They are useful, but often locked away from the people they represent.
Our question is simple:
What happens when a digital twin becomes something you can enter, explore, and play with?
Using game engines like Unreal Engine and UEFN/Fortnite, we explored how real places can turn into shared playgrounds for learning, experimentation, and engagement. Not games in the traditional sense, but playful environments where interaction comes first.
That is what we mean by making digital twins playable.
The toolbox behind Playable Places
In the talk, we showed how Playable Places is built by combining different ways of capturing and simulating reality:
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Photogrammetry and Gaussian Splatting for visual realism
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OpenStreetMap data for structure, scale, and layout
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Cesium and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles for large-scale context
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Generative AI to speed up workflows and adapt environments
AI plays a growing role here, not to replace reality, but to make it more flexible and adaptable. Things like changing time of day, lighting, seasons, or cleaning and optimising textures can already be done efficiently, something weβre also exploring through our tool GENERAITR.
Why play matters
Play is not just entertainment. It is one of the most effective ways humans learn, test ideas, and understand complex systems.
By bringing digital twins into playable, social environments, cities and organisations can:
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Communicate complex topics more clearly
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Invite citizens, students, or stakeholders to explore scenarios
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Turn passive viewers into active participants
That is why Playable Places is not only about games, but about education, urban planning, culture, and future simulations.
You can read more about the project here and watch our demo stakeholder video.
Watch the talk and see the presentation
The full talk from Unreal Fest is now available on Epic Gamesβ Unreal Engine YouTube channel here:
If you want more context about the event itself and see other talks check out these links below:
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