A 3D office

The client is a US-based software company that acquires digital products to enhance their business potential and market appeal.

One of their key developments is an online platform that aims at improving interactions between remote collaborators in business and educational contexts.

Our client wanted to upgrade a web application that makes online collaboration tangible by placing it in a virtual office space.

The space was represented as a 2D map, complete with rooms and office equipment, and a 3D version seemed to be the natural way to provide a more immersive user experience.

UNITY 3D was chosen for the proof of concept as it seemed well-suited for the project. After 3 months of development, though, the efforts all but failed due to critical performance issues and lacking support for mobile web browsers.

As we stepped in to save the day, the first thing to do was to recommend an alternative 3D engine that would deliver the required performance along with broad web browser support, especially on mobile. Our weapon of choice was Babylon.js.

When the client green-lighted our parallel proof of concept, we managed to recreate the functional scope of the UNITY application in less than a month. The result spoke for itself, while UNITY was great for complex 3D games, in the hands of knowledgeable web developers, Babylon.js was much more effective.