Guzo Technologies Receives A Grant from Epic Games to Gamify Ethiopian Historical Places Through Extended Reality

Guzo Technologies receives a grant from Epic Games to fund the Ethiopian XploreR  (Ethiopia XR) project.

Guzo Technologies is a startup based in Addis Abeba that does AR/VR content design, development, and implementation, build IoT platforms, and as well as enterprise software development.

One of Guzo Technology’s products is called Guzo Map. Guzo Map is an all-in-one photo and video virtual tour platform that aims to recreate Ethiopian Historical sites virtually. Bakaffa Palace that is found in Gondar is one of Guzo Map’s virtual reality pilot project.

Ethiopian XploreR, a project under Guzo Map which is now funded by Epic Games, is an XR ( Extended Reality ) project that aims to promote Ethiopian historical places through gamified and immersive experiences.

Extended reality (XR) is a term referring to all real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions generated by computer technology and wearables, where the ‘X’ represents a variable for any current or future spatial computing technologies.

The first version of the project will include 4 selected places in Ethiopia. It will be composed of a virtual tour guide that narrates the story behind each destination and will be available online for free to tourists who would like to visit Ethiopia.

The Mixed Reality version of the platform which will include physical objects along the virtual reality will be available in selected places for paid users. In addition, invited guests will have a chance to experience the sites at Guzomap XR studio. The whole project is estimated to be completed in the next 5months.

Epic Games, a video game and software developer and publisher behind the much-known video games like Fortnite, has committed $100 million grant to support game developers, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators, and tool developers doing amazing things with Unreal Engine or enhancing open-source capabilities for the 3D graphics community.

The grant called The Epic MegaGrants program encourages projects that will benefit the Unreal Engine ecosystem or the 3D graphics community.

The grant amount provided by Epic Mega Grant to Guzo Technologies is not disclosed specifically but Shega has been informed that it’s in the range of between $10 – 50 K.

” We’re really happy to receive this grant for our project ‘Ethiopia XR’. EpicGames believed in our idea and this gives us a big encouragement”, said Daniel Getachew, Founder of Guzo Technologies.

He went on to add, ” We’ve been using one of the best game engines by EpicGames called UnrealEngine to develop almost all of our VR projects and now we’re planning to bring more talents under our creative team supervision and work on this project. We’re committed to bringing African culture and heritage to the world with these emerging technologies”

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Profile Image is provided by Guzo Technologies.