Dundee students off to London to compete for Microsoft prize

Abertay hopefuls to demonstrate their software to experts

Students from Abertay University in Dundee are in with the chance of winning an international prize for their innovative work in virtual reality technology.

They have made it to the national finals of this year’s Microsoft Imagine Cup UK, which seeks out the most innovative and potentially worldchanging software solutions.

The teams will travel to London this week for the national heat. Ten teams will pitch their ideas and show off their work to a panel of industry experts on Friday.

From then, one team will progress to the worldwide finals in Seattle in July, where a prize of $100,000 – around £70,000 – is up for grabs.

Representing Abertay are the Black Light team with their game Firepoint, a firefighting simulator that uses both the HoloLens and Mixed Reality headset, and Harry Good, a fourth-year game design and production management student, for his game War Space.

Firepoint was designed as a tool to teach trainee firefighters as they learn how to deal with a variety of scenarios.

The Black Light team is led by thirdyear game design and production management student Matt McAuley.

War Space is a real-time strategy game that is innovative due to how the game adapts depending on the player’s style.

As well as the opportunity to compete in the worldwide finals, the winners of Friday’s battle will also be awarded £5,000 and an Xbox One X console per person. Second and third-placed runners-up will walk away with a cash prize of £3,000 and £2,000 respectively.

Matt McAuley was particularly excited as he said the team were one of the first to use Microsoft’s new headset.

He said: “We got the opportunity to develop on the Mixed Reality headset, we’re actually one of the first people to start developing on it as it was only released in October.

“Getting into the final is particularly good. The whole team is really excited to have this opportunity to go down to London and compete.”

Harry Good said: “It’s interesting to be able to go in front of a bunch of Microsoft big wigs essentially and show off what I’ve done.”

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We got the opportunity to develop on the Mixed Reality headset, we’re actually one of the first people to start developing on it ... MATT MCAULEY