2025 Gold Davey Award Winner — Best World-Building Design
Honored with the international Gold Davey Award in Virtual & Immersive Experiences (Education), recognizing premier architectural accuracy, physical material simulation, and environmental world-building in a specialized biomedical facility.
Developed at the VAST Lab in partnership with the UT Dallas Office of Research and Innovation, the UTD Vivarium Digital Twin is an accurate real-time architectural and operational simulation of the university’s biomedical animal research and quarantine laboratories. Built in Unreal Engine 5, the digital twin serves as a remote facility orientation, regulatory compliance training platform, and institutional showcase.
Architectural Precision & Specialized Equipment
Biomedical research vivariums require rigorous bio-containment protocols, directional airflow systems, sterilizers, and specialized airlocks. Every corridor, sanitization station, animal housing rack, and surgical preparation suite was reconstructed from architectural CAD schematics with millimeter accuracy.
Real-Time Lighting & Material Fidelity
Leveraging Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen dynamic global illumination and custom PBR materials authoring in Substance, the environment faithfully captures the harsh fluorescent illumination, antimicrobial epoxy floor reflections, and stainless steel surface roughness characteristic of sterile cleanrooms.
Interactive Guided Training & Tour Expansion
Following the completion of the core digital twin, an interactive guided pedagogical walkthrough was developed, allowing prospective researchers and inspection officials to explore the vivarium without breaking physical sterile barriers.
Interactive Pedagogical Waypoints
New laboratory staff must master complex gowning, airlock sequencing, and bio-containment procedures before ever entering the physical cleanroom:
- Guided Teleportation Nodes: Guided pathing takes users through the exact sequential order required when transitioning between anterooms, sterile surgical suites, and animal holding wards.
- Audio Hotspots & Knowledge Checks: Synchronized audio narration from veterinary directors explaining facility pressure gradients, cage sanitization autoclave cycles, and personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements.
- Compliance Quizzing: Interactive 3D checkpoints verifying protocol retention directly within the simulated laboratory environment.