Future directions for the development of Virtual Reality within an automotive manufacturer

Virtual Reality (VR) can reduce time and costs, and lead to increases in quality, in the development of a product. Given the pressure on car companies to reduce time-to-market and to continually improve quality, the automotive industry has championed the use of VR across a number of applications, including design, manufacturing, and training. This paper describes interviews with 11 engineers and employees of allied disciplines from an automotive manufacturer about their current physical and virtual properties and processes. The results guided a review of research findings and scientific advances from the academic literature, which formed the basis of recommendations for future developments of VR technologies and applications. These include: develop a greater range of virtual contexts; use multi-sensory simulation; address perceived differences between virtual and real cars; improve motion capture capabilities; implement networked 3D technology; and use VR for market research

Advanced Visualization of Crashworthiness Simulations using Virtual Reality Techniques

Regarding the increasing complexity of computer simulations on one hand and the development of computer technology in the last few years on the other hand, the demand on new visualization techniques to analyze the immense amount of data originating from scientific calculations has reached new dimensions. In the case of crashworthiness simulations, expanding the effectiveness of traditional post processing techniques is one key to achieve shorter design cycles and faster time to market. A very promising approach, that benefits from the recent progress in software and hardware technology, is the use of virtual reality techniques. At BMW, in co-operation with the University of Erlangen, we developed the software system VtCrash, that performs a three dimensional visualization and allows the user to observe, enter and manipulate the visualized crash in a virtual environment. A key feature of VtCrash is the possibility, not only to look at the simulation, but also to immerse into a scene th..