Chinese Tencent recently bought a minority stake in the Czech game studio Bohemia Interactive and now he has also gone indirectly to Slovakia. Epic Games, which is behind the very popular game Fortnite and Unreal Engine, acquired the Bratislava company Capturing Reality. Tencent in Epic holds 48.4 percent.
Capturing Reality is behind the advanced graphics tool RealityCapture, which can be used to convert photos into three-dimensional virtual objects. It is a so-called photogrammetry, which has been used for some time when creating games or 3D models in maps. In this way, you can create a realistic-looking environment.
The Slovak tool is therefore an ideal complement to the Unreal Engine, which together with Unity is the most used engine in game development. Epic does not yet say how tight the integration will be or whether the Unreal Engine itself will absorb the purchased tool or let it run on its own for a long time. In any case, RealityCapture can be used free of charge, the license must be obtained when exporting the work for further use.
RealityCapture also has its roots at CTU in Prague, where the project was co-founded by the co-founders Martin Bujňák a Michal Jančošek. Their doctoral theses are readable here a here (PDF).
Capturing Reality in 2019 achieved revenues of 2.3 million euros with a profit of 1.2 million euros. This is a rapid growth, in 2015 revenues amounted to 135.6 thousand euros.
The company has so far been controlled by the Trnava entity RCRES Invest. In addition to Jančošek (28.33 percent) and Bujňák (33.33 percent), the shareholders were also Hana Buchalíková Bujňáková (16.67 percent), Jozef Bujňák (8.33 percent), Marta Bujňáková (8.33 percent) a Ladislav Dedík (five percent). The assets will be transferred to the new company Epic Games Slovakia.
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