Technologies
Overview
About Kentucky Manufactured Housing Institute
The Kentucky Manufactured Housing Institute (KMHI) is the leading trade association representing the factory-built housing industry across Kentucky. They support a vast network of professionals, from designers and builders to installers and lenders, ensuring the industry maintains the highest standards of safety and energy efficiency. KMHI is dedicated to promoting high-quality, modern manufactured homes as a sustainable and affordable path to the American Dream for Kentucky families.
Services
Their Challenge
The supply of quality, affordable housing is shrinking nationwide, and Kentucky is no exception. While modern factory-built homes offer a viable path to sustainable homeownership, the industry still faces a persistent stigma rooted in outdated perceptions of manufactured homes as low-quality or temporary. KMHI works to break this stigma by demonstrating that today’s manufactured homes are upscale, high-performance structures that are often indistinguishable from site-built counterparts.
Not only does KMHI struggle against this outdated perception, but it also faces the ongoing challenge of capturing the attention of high school students and young professionals at job fairs and trade shows. KMHI wanted an innovative way to stand out and attract talent at these events.
Our Solution
Saritasa partnered with KMHI to build a VR experience that transforms a complex industrial process into an engaging, gamified recruitment tool. Built using the Unity engine, the VR simulation places users in a realistic suburban neighborhood where they must navigate a massive manufactured home into tight quarters using a “house tug”.
We aimed to create an experience that is both fun and educational. The VR application helps KMHI stand out at career fairs, giving prospects a hands-on look at the technology and skills involved in modern manufactured housing. The experience concludes with a video of a family moving into the home, reinforcing the industry’s role in solving the housing crisis.
Our Approach
What Saritasa Did
Custom 3D Modeling
Using CAD files provided by the manufacturer, our team built a highly detailed 3D model of the house tug and the split-section manufactured homes. We also designed a suburban environment to create a believable Kentucky neighborhood. This realistic backdrop helps users visualize the impact of their work in a community setting.
Custom Physics Engine
The “house tug” machine uses unique “zero-turn” mechanics in which one side of the tires can stop completely while the others continue to turn. We developed custom physics within Unity to replicate this specific movement, ensuring the simulation felt authentic to the real-world equipment. This level of detail was necessary to convey the true technical skill required for the job.
Gamified Economic Model
To simulate the high stakes of home installation, we implemented a gameified budget system in which “project profit” decreases with each passing second and with each collision. Hitting objects like mailboxes results in financial penalties, while “running over” the operator’s virtual self resets the level. This encourages users to balance speed with the extreme precision required on a real job site.
