Headquarters Oviedo, Spain Type of business Game development | Founded 1999 | |
Industry Computer and video game industry Products Educational (serious) games Website Official Virtway website | ||
Virtway is a serious game developer located in Oviedo, Spain. It was founded in 1999 as a general IT consulting firm, but in 2006 it spun off from its parent company to focus on 3D development and serious gaming as an independent branch of the Indigo Group holding.
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eLearning platform
The main focus of the company has been developing an advanced simulation system to empower learning through gaming, called VTS (Virtual Training System). The platform was presented at the 2008 Games+Learning+Society conference in partnership with Robb Lindgren from Stanford University.
VTS is built on top of the Gamebryo game engine and uses NVIDIA PhysX for the physics simulation (Formerly known as Ageia).
Apparently VTS is being applied to several areas of training, such as Firefighting (a teaser video depicting firefighters appeared on the company's YouTube channel) or Iron/Steel Industry.
3D Simulation
Virtway has an extensive experience in developing 3D simulations/recreations of realistic scenarios distributed by several means (such as web pages).
Molina Digital was the first large scale 3D project developed by Virtway. It was the recreation of a Spanish town (Molina de Segura, Murcia) where users could chat, drive cars and play Pétanque, all in 3D and through an Internet browser, leveraging the Quest3D technology.
Part of the Molina Digital project was the development of an Interactive Theatre, a pioneer application where users could take a role in a virtual play. Each user handles an avatar on stage, and controls its body language and facial expression while he talks with his mates. Everything is recorded by another user -the director- who edits the footage later, in a way similar to a machinima production.
Virtway has also been contracted by the regional government of Asturias to develop a 3D virtual visit of the city of Llanes. The result of this contract is a website where users can visit said town in 3D using x3d technology and a port of the landmarks to Google Earth KML models.
Videogames
Virtway started the development of a project called Born To Run in 2004, and presented it in late 2006. It was aimed to be one of the first First Person Shooters with photo-realistic levels of quality made in Spain, and slated to hit next-gen systems (PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360). There has been no more information about the game since its announcement, so it is probably cancelled by now.
On 6 October 2008, Virtway entered into partnership with ICYou, a Swedish company, to further develop their so-called Interactive City platform, a persistent virtual world with tie-ins to the real world of its players through a blend of virtual and real economy.
Strategic Partnerships
As a member of the Indigo Group Holding, Virtway collaborates with some strategic partners which share their knowledge and allow them to offer better services.
As one of their partners Alletrust offers experience to Virtway improving their process and services.
ICYou AB (Publ) is a strategic partners that develops the Interactive City on the Virtway platform.
Research
Virtway has maintained collaborations through the Índigo Group with University of Oviedo and Stanford University in different research and development projects.