Improbable aims to simulate an entire city with new virtual world tech

UK tech startup Improbable has been working on an ambitious virtual world rendering platform for some time, and this week the company gave it a name: SpatialOS.

While we've known for some time that Improbable was working on a remotely-distributed virtual world operating system, details about what it was and how it would actually work have always been hard to come by.

Now you can just head over to the SpatialOS website to learn more and (if you're a developer) sign up for early access to the SDK. Multiple developers are already using it to build games, including DayZ creator Dean Hall and I Am Bread progenitor Bossa Studios. 

But Improbable wants to go beyond that -- it wants SpatialOS to be used in fields like education, healthcare and government. In naming its technology this week the firm also set itself a mission: to work with city planners, developers and educators to simulate a full-size city down to details like traffic management and pollution patterns.

"We’re going to have an oracle for an entire city...We’ll be able to answer questions like 'what happens when we introduce autonomous vehicles,' or look at interactions between different things," Improbable CEO Herman Narula recently told Business Insider. "The end game here is to give a city an operating system."

For a more focused look at how the technology can be utilized in game development, check out our recent interview with Narula and the folks at Bossa Studios about how a team of 15 is using Improbable tech to build a physics-based MMO: Worlds Adrift.