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Abu Dhabi Is Now Open For Virtual Tourists To Explore
Yas Island has recreated key landmarks and top-billed attractions within the leading gaming platform, Roblox.
Yas Island is ready to be discovered by a new global audience of digital travelers as it launches a unique virtual experience, allowing virtual tourists to digitally explore 25 square kilometers of Abu Dhabi’s premier entertainment and leisure district, plus other iconic Emirati landmarks.
The new initiative is part of a collaboration between the Department of Culture and Tourism, Aldar, Miral, twofour54, and Ethara.
The virtual Yas Island experience has been developed by Super League and is hosted on the leading gaming platform Roblox. Dubbed “Yas Island Tycoon – Roblox,” users will be able to take a thrilling journey through key Abu Dhabi landmarks across Yas Island and beyond, including SeaWorld, the Yas Marina Circuit, Etihad Park, Aldar Square, Al Jahili Fort, and many more.
As travelers wander the virtual destination and sample its attractions, they will experience theme park rides and race car driving, plus be able to construct virtual homes.
HE Saeed Al Fazari, Strategic Affairs Executive Director at DCT Abu Dhabi, said: “This immersive adventure in the virtual realm is the latest example of Abu Dhabi’s commitment to utilizing innovation and creativity to reach ever wider audiences. While we have shared Abu Dhabi with millions of visitors in the real world, today marks the start of a new phase in our journey”.
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Rashed Al Omaira, Chief Commercial Officer at Aldar Development, also noted: “The virtual Yas Island experience unlocks new opportunities for a global audience […] The effective use of innovative content creation enables us to tell the story of Abu Dhabi and allows people worldwide to become immersed in it. We are excited to see people interact with Aldar’s assets on Yas Island in the virtual world and hope it inspires them to take a trip to Abu Dhabi soon”.
You can visit the Yas Island virtual experience at Yas Island Tycoon – Roblox.
News
Google Releases Veo 2 AI Video Tool To MENA Users
The state-of-the-art video generation model is now available in Gemini, offering realistic AI-generated videos with better physics, motion, and detail.
Starting today, users of Gemini Advanced in the MENA region — and globally — can tap into Veo 2, Google’s next-generation video model.
Originally unveiled in 2024, Veo 2 has now been fully integrated into Gemini, supporting multiple languages including Arabic and English. The rollout now brings Google’s most advanced video AI directly into the hands of everyday users.
Veo 2 builds on the foundations of its predecessor with a more sophisticated understanding of the physical world. It’s designed to produce high-fidelity video content with cinematic detail, realistic motion, and greater visual consistency across a wide range of subjects and styles. Whether recreating natural landscapes, human interactions, or stylized environments, the model is capable of interpreting and translating written prompts into eight-second 720p videos that feel almost handcrafted.
Users can generate content directly through the Gemini platform — either via the web or mobile apps. The experience is pretty straightforward: users enter a text-based prompt, and Veo 2 returns a video in 16:9 landscape format, delivered as an MP4 file. These aren’t just generic clips — they can reflect creative, abstract, or highly specific scenarios, making the tool especially useful for content creators, marketers, or anyone experimenting with visual storytelling.
Also Read: Getting Started With Google Gemini: A Beginner’s Guide
To ensure transparency, each video is embedded with SynthID — a digital watermark developed by Google’s DeepMind. The watermark is invisible to the human eye but persists across editing, compression, and sharing. It identifies the video as AI-generated, addressing concerns around misinformation and media authenticity.
While Veo 2 is still in its early phases of public rollout, the technology is part of a broader push by Google to democratize advanced AI tools. With text-to-image, code generation, and now video creation integrated into Gemini, Google is positioning the platform as a full-spectrum creative assistant.
Access to Veo 2 starts today and will continue expanding in the coming weeks. Interested users can try it out at gemini.google.com or through the Gemini app on Android and iOS.
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