Month: June 2025

As businesses look for smarter, more engaging ways to connect with audiences, train employees, and visualize complex ideas, digital humans—also known as metahumans—are quickly becoming a compelling solution. These hyper-realistic, interactive avatars are powered by advanced 3D modeling, motion capture, and AI, making them capable of human-like communication, behavior, and expression.

So what exactly are digital humans, and how are companies using them today?

At Horizon Productions, we’ve been building next-gen digital human experiences that help businesses unlock the full potential of this technology—whether it’s for training, marketing, or real-time interaction.

Defining Digital Humans (Metahumans)

Digital humans are lifelike virtual representations of people, built using high-fidelity 3D modeling and often animated in real time. Tools like Unreal Engine’s MetaHuman Creator have made it easier than ever to generate stunningly realistic avatars with detailed facial animations, gestures, and natural-looking movements.

When combined with AI-driven language models—like GPT or domain-trained conversational AIs—these avatars can respond, teach, guide, and communicate almost like a real person. The result? A truly interactive experience that bridges the gap between digital and human engagement.

Key Business Applications

Here are some of the most practical and forward-thinking ways digital humans are being used across industries:

1. Conversational Training and Onboarding

Digital humans can serve as interactive trainers for new employees, guiding them through onboarding, safety procedures, or compliance training. When powered by a conversational AI, they can field questions in real-time, adapt their tone to the user’s experience level, and offer a consistent, scalable learning environment.

Use Case: A manufacturing company deploys a digital human to talk new hires through machine safety protocols using voice-guided instruction.

2. Digital Human Chatbots

Instead of interacting with faceless text on a screen, users can now engage with a digital human that responds with facial expressions, voice inflection, and body language—making the exchange feel more natural and human. These avatars can be embedded in websites, kiosks, or customer service portals.

Use Case: A hotel chain uses a metahuman concierge on its booking website, answering questions, making personalized recommendations, and helping guests finalize reservations.

3. Medical Visualization and Disease Modeling

One of the most powerful applications is in healthcare, where digital humans can be used to visually represent different disease states or severities. A custom UI can allow practitioners—or even patients—to explore how conditions progress or respond to treatment, aiding in education, diagnosis, or sales enablement for pharmaceutical reps.

Use Case: A pharmaceutical company uses a digital human to show how eczema appears across different skin tones and severity levels, helping dermatologists choose the right treatment path.

4. Virtual Spokespersons or Brand Ambassadors

Metahumans are now appearing as the face of brands—offering product overviews, demonstrating features, or delivering key messages at trade shows or on digital platforms. 

Use Case: A tech company creates a digital brand ambassador who appears across social channels and AR/VR platforms, narrating the company’s innovation story in a consistent, polished voice.

5. Customer-Facing Training Simulations

From retail to healthcare, companies are using metahumans in virtual scenarios where users can practice handling customer interactions, difficult conversations, or real-world challenges in a safe environment.

Use Case: A retail chain trains store managers with an interactive digital human who simulates various employee conflict scenarios, allowing trainees to practice resolving issues with empathy and professionalism.

Why It Matters

At Horizon Productions, we believe digital humans are more than just a tech novelty—they’re a powerful new interface for business. They create space for scalable, deeply engaging interactions in training, marketing, and customer experience.

As AI continues to evolve and spatial computing becomes more mainstream, we see digital humans playing an even bigger role in enterprise workflows, virtual events, remote learning, and more.

Let’s Build the Future, Together

If you’re exploring how to integrate digital humans into your business, Horizon Productions can help you design, develop, and deploy custom solutions that align with your brand, audience, and goals. From lifelike modeling and motion capture to conversational AI integration, we handle the full pipeline.

Whether you’re imagining a virtual trainer, an interactive disease state simulator, or a digital sales rep that works 24/7—we’re here to bring it to life.

What do HR onboarding, safety procedures, and clinical research training all have in common?

They’re often delivered through outdated formats—PowerPoints, webinars, or clunky LMS portals. But what if your next training program looked more like a video game—and not just any game, but Fortnite?

Welcome to the era of gamified training solutions—where corporate training becomes an immersive experience built using the Unreal Editor for Fortnite or even Unreal Engine itself. Horizon Productions is helping companies shift from passive learning to active engagement by developing custom training environments that look and feel like the games people already play.

The Problem With Traditional Corporate Training

Most corporate training struggles to capture attention. It’s static, repetitive, and often viewed as something employees have to get through, not something they want to explore.

• Low retention: Passive formats don’t stick
  
• One-size-fits-all: Content isn’t adaptive or engaging
  
• Remote challenges: Distributed teams are harder to immerse
  
• Digital fatigue: Slide decks and videos just don’t always cut it anymore
  

If you’re investing in training but getting low engagement, it’s time to rethink the format entirely.

Why Fortnite or Unreal Engine? Why Now?

Fortnite isn’t just a game—it’s a global platform with over 400 million registered users and a massive cultural footprint. With Epic Games’ launch of Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), businesses can now tap into this ecosystem to create completely custom, interactive training worlds.

Here’s why it works:

• Familiarity: Most users (especially younger employees) already know how to navigate Fortnite or other Unreal gaming experiences
  
• Accessibility: Works on PC, console, and mobile—no VR headset required
  
• Creative freedom: UEFN and Unreal Engine allows you to build branded, story-driven environments
  
• Multiplayer & collaboration: Teams can train together in real time
  
• Built-in engagement: Quest-based learning, rewards, and progress tracking
  

Real-World Use Cases for UEFN Training

We’re already building these types of experiences for forward-thinking companies:

Safety Protocols

Let employees walk through proper safety procedures inside a simulated factory. They can test scenarios, make choices, and learn the consequences—without risk.

Medical & Clinical Training

Create immersive walkthroughs for emergency procedures, new medical equipment, or compliance updates for Clinical Research Associates (CRAs).

Interactive Onboarding

Turn first-day orientation into a journey. Let new hires explore a digital replica of your workplace, meet virtual team leads, and complete missions to learn policies and culture.

Education & Upskilling

Replace dry learning modules with game-based paths that reward curiosity and completion. Use training levels to help employees learn new tech, workflows, or roles.

What Horizon Builds Inside Fortnite

As a 2025 Epic Games Gold Unreal Engine Service Partner, Horizon Productions brings certified expertise in building real-time training environments. We bring together developers, 3D artists, storytellers, and subject matter experts to build fully customized Fortnite and Unreal experiences—designed specifically for your unique use case.

Here’s what’s possible:

• Branded environments – Reflect your workplace, products, or industry
  
• Narrative training paths – Learners follow a mission, not a slide deck
  
• Realistic scenarios – Choose your path, respond to challenges
  
• Game mechanics – Unlock rewards, level up, and track progress
  
• AI-guided support – Optional voice-guided avatars or conversational agents
  
• Analytics & feedback – See what employees engage with and where they drop off
  

We combine gameplay, storytelling, and real-world relevance to turn training into something people look forward to.

Whether you’re starting with a single use case, proof of concept, or looking to overhaul an entire program, we build with scale and engagement in mind.

Let’s Build a Training Program People Actually Want to Explore

Today’s workforce craves interactivity, not information overload. With UEFN and Unreal Engine, Horizon Productions is helping companies create training programs that employees actually want to complete—and remember.

If you’re ready to turn your training into an immersive experience, let’s talk.

👉 Contact Horizon to start building your custom Fortnite training world.

As technology advances, new buzzwords like “virtual reality” (VR) and “mixed reality” (MR) have become part of our everyday conversations. But what do these terms really mean, and how do they shape our future? While both VR and MR offer fascinating glimpses into immersive worlds, they each have unique attributes that set them apart. Let’s first delve into the world of mixed reality, explore how it stands out from virtual reality, and discover the possibilities it holds.

Understanding Mixed Reality

At its core, mixed reality is a combination of the physical and digital worlds, seamlessly blending virtual objects with our real environment. Unlike virtual reality, which completely immerses users in a computer-generated environment, mixed reality anchors digital content into the real world, creating an interactive experience. Think of it as a digital layer that enriches your perception of reality, inviting you to interact with both the tangible and intangible.

Imagine looking at your desk and seeing a digital sticky note float above it, or turning around and seeing a virtual model or digital twin of a new building project in your living room. MR makes these experiences possible by blending the digital world with the physical one.

Mixed reality finds its roots in augmented reality (AR). However, MR allows you to not only see these digital elements in the physical world but to interact with them in real time. It’s like giving your surroundings a digital upgrade, where your living room can become an operation table, or your workspace can showcase that new equipment you are about to install. 

Mixed Reality vs. Virtual Reality: Spotting the Differences

To truly appreciate the marvel that is mixed reality, it is important to understand how it differs from virtual reality:

• Environment Interaction: While VR completely immerses you in a virtual world, detaching you from the physical environment, MR brings digital elements into your real surroundings, allowing them to interact with the world around you. This opens up endless possibilities for interactive applications in education, training, and beyond.
  
• User-Friendliness: Unlike VR, where users are fully immersed and cut off from the physical world, MR keeps you grounded in your surroundings while enabling interaction with digital elements, making it more intuitive and less disorienting. This means you can engage with digital content without losing touch with reality, making MR more user-friendly and practical for everyday use.

• Accessibility and Equipment: Both virtual reality and mixed reality rely on specialized equipment, like VR headsets and controllers, to deliver an immersive experience. However, mixed reality can also be accessed through devices such as augmented reality glasses or even smartphones, making it more readily available for everyday use.
  
• Level of Immersion: VR offers a high level of immersion, transporting users to entirely new worlds. Mixed reality provides a more nuanced experience, where users remain grounded in their environment while interacting with digital content. This makes MR ideal for applications where blending digital with reality enhances the experience without overpowering it.
  
• Applications and Use Cases: Although both are primarily recognized for gaming and entertainment, the true potential of VR and MR lies in practical applications such as training, education, design, and sales. Imagine architects using MR to place a digital model of a building in a real-world environment, instantly visualizing how it fits into the space. Or medical professionals practicing surgeries in a risk-free environment.

The Future of Mixed Reality

As technology continues to change and evolve at an incredibly rapid pace, mixed reality revolutionizes how we interact with the world. From enhancing productivity with virtual workspace setups to transforming how we learn and train, MR is poised to become a staple in our digital toolkit.

While mixed reality is not an essential part of our daily lives just yet, its potential is undeniably intriguing. As MR technology progresses, it will continue to blur the lines between the physical and digital, offering experiences that enrich our perception of reality in ways we are only beginning to imagine.

Mixed Reality will shape how we work, learn, and interact with the world. Stay tuned as we dive deeper into this exciting frontier—where the digital and physical worlds blend seamlessly.

As we explore the possibilities Mixed Reality holds, we open ourselves to new ways of experiencing and interacting with our environment, going from improbable to anything is possible.