Recreating real landscapes in Unity game engine can really help us understand how defensive structures like pillboxes that we get used to seeing around us in the landscape, were strategically positioned. With the added possibility of staging attacks in the game engine, we can get an idea of their line of sight, their construction and test their resilience.
For this particular project, we worked on recreating an area of Auburn Sands on the Yorkshire coast, the site of the remains of both First and Second World War defences. Understanding how these structures combined to stand as sentries against an attack from the sea and how they would have scanned the horizon can really be enhanced with 3d models.
The landscape of Auburn Sands in the Unity game engine
Lidar information was brought into Unity to recreate the topology of the area. This allowed us to create trenches in the correct locations and see where the pillboxes would have been positioned. The potential here would be to show how a ship on the horizon might have been discovered and how trajectories of attack might have impacted the defences and the surrounding area. It could also show how defensive fire might have been received.
A view of the beach from inside the pillbox
The lozenge pillbox model was built in Cinema4d. As a work in progress, the intention is to include the structures into the Unity scene. Potentially, these could be explored with Augmented and/or Virtual Reality.
Some renders from Cinema4d of pillbox models