June 1998, Vol. 15, No. 6

For many years, virtual reality was considered the ultimate in entertainment. This technology empowered people who would now be able to "move" in a video game not just from one side of the screen to the other, but they would be able to look all around in a new and fascinating virtual environment.

Over the years, virtual reality has broken through the entertainment realm into the commercial sector and is currently used in areas once thought impossible. Presently, virtual reality is used in the medical field, the science field and even the manufacturing industry.

The automobile industry as well as the military have reaped the benefits of virtual reality and have begun using it to create virtual environments that are more cost efficient, more practical and just as easy to use (if not easier) than their physical counterparts.

Fakespace (Mountain View, Calif.; www.fakespace.com) is a supplier of 3D immersive visualization systems used to interact with virtual environments created for applications in education and training, scientific and commercial research, product design and engineering, and location-based entertainment. The company, founded in 1988, has worked with both Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corporation as well as the Naval Research Lab and has seen how virtual reality can make an organization more productive.

Recently, Intelligent Systems Report sat down with David Eggleston, vice president of sales and marketing for Fakespace Inc., to discuss the strides virtual reality has made in both the automobile industry and the military.

Intelligent Systems Report: In what areas of the car industry — besides virtual prototyping — is virtual reality being used?

David Eggleston: It gets called a lot of different things, but I think conceptually, the idea of virtual prototyping is probably the most important to the automotive industry. The automobile companies ­ and aerospace companies as well ­ have millions of dollars invested in CAD databases. These databases are huge and extremely valuable.

What virtual reality, or immersive visualization, does is to expand the access to this data and make it more useful. What the virtual reality does, is it provides immersive, stereoscopic access to that database so that now, instead of having a model that appears on your monitor and you try to envision what it looks like in 3D, you're actually able to see a stereoscopic model as if it were physically there in front of you. From a design standpoint, this helps immensely.

You're able to interact with the model in a much more realistic way. The benefits to engineers and designers are dramatic, but people in marketing and sales can leverage this advantage as well.

ISR: How does virtual reality replace traditional methods that were previously used?

DE: In the case of virtual prototyping, in the past, you would physically make a model out of plywood and foam, and you would mock that up so that you would have a "quarter buck." It looks like a car that's had the front part removed and the back part removed. It's just the passenger area.

So you would open a door or you'd sit on a seat, and there'd be a dashboard made out of wood and foam with a steering wheel and some locations for the radio and heat and A/C control. So you would physically create that. And it would have all the drawbacks of a physical model: it would take time to produce, and it would be cumbersome to modify. A computer-generated model can be more accurate, realistic and much more easily changed.

With virtual reality, it can look and feel like you are physcially sitting inside a vehicle. You could interact with radio controls and the climate controls, the same way you would in a physical model , only it is much easier and more cost effective to try out multiple iterations of a given design. The virtual model doesn't get "tired" or chopped up over time the way the plywood and foam does.

Chrysler has publicly said that this approach has enabled them to do in a matter of hours what, in the past, has taken them months to accomplish.

ISR: Some people think that even with the advancements of virtual reality over the years that currently it remains somewhat "unreal." Do you think the automobile industry is satisfied with the level of "reality" virtual reality has to offer?

DE: I think they're satisfied. I would use this as my indicator: They're spending more money on these types of systems; more groups within the automobile industry are embracing this type of technology. (It started out with just one group to test the capability, and it has fanned out to additional groups.) Also, they are very secretive about the latest and greatest things they are doing with virtual reality.

To me, these are indicators of the importance that they put on it and the value that they put on it. They are doing more of it, they are spending more money on it, it's getting wider acceptance within the corporations and they are talking less about it. Those are all indicators that it is important, and is seen as a competitive advantage.

ISR: What types of interfaces are being used gloves, headgear, bodysuit?

DE: There are many different systems for immersive visualization. Different tools are appropriate for different applications. When you hear negative criticism or when you hear people say that VR's not ready, it's usually an indication that the right tool was not used for the problem they had.

In some instances, you can have a very gross representation of the model, and it's sufficient for what you're trying to achieve. In other instances you want a very precise and realistic model. If the gross representation is used to solve a precise problem, it doesn't work.

For example, for virtual prototyping, models have to be very precise. The interaction with the model also has to be very precise. You want a high-resolution display; and you want tracking to be very smooth because designers are going to be in the environment for long periods of time.

Chrysler uses a BOOM (Binocular Omni-Orientation Monitor)-type disply from Fakespace for this kind of visualization. While it attaches to the head for hands-free viewing, the weight of the high-resolution CRTs is supported by a free-standing structure. If you're talking about a model to be used in a dealership or a representation for more of a promotional type of application, it doesn't necessarily need to be as precise. An artistic representation, with the kind of resolution that you get on a home TV screen, would be sufficient for that type of application.

ISR: What other areas of the automobile industry do you think virtual reality will be used in the future?

DE: In engineering, it will be used to test safety, such as crash worthiness and to test serviceability. In manufacturing, it can be used to simulate the factory floor. It's very costly for automobile companies to shut down the manufacturing line to make changes.

Using virtual reality, companies can test out modified layouts and simulate the manufacturing process before making actual changes. We have some clients who will physically lay out the manufacturing line in a model and then are able to interact with it just like they interacted with the interior of the car in the virtual prototyping instance.

Every part of the design and the manufacturing production sequence can implement virtual reality based on the way they do their jobs and what sort of resources they have available to them. A lot of the analysis ­ where there's computational fluid dynamics ­ or crash-worthiness safety consideration ­ those things can also benefit from virtual reality.

Ultimately, as systems become more bullet-proof and less costly, I think VR will play a big role in marketing and promotion.

ISR: Do you think using virtual reality in the automobile industry pays for itself?

DE: While we haven't been given actual ROI numbers, we know that virtual prototyping reduces tasks that previously took months to complete to completion within hours.

The growth of the investment in equipment for immersive visualization is the biggest indicator that the automotive companies are profiting from this implementaton. Their actions certainly imply that it has been a cost benefit.

ISR: Many times implementing high technology systems can wreak havoc on the average individual with little or no computer skills. What kind of training is involved with virtual reality?

DE: This is really the essence of the virtual reality-type interface so it really has two answers. One answer is that the group of people who create the interface have highly technical skills in computer programming and graphics. These people are highly trained in the areas of being able to do the programming, setting up the hardware, making sure all the interfaces work. Additionally, they must be experts in the ways human beings communicate with each other so that can be implemented in the computer realm. That's the preparation of the simulation, so to speak.

For the people using the simulation, the benefit of virtual reality is exactly the point that you don't need to know anything about a computer to be able to properly access information. If the simulation is done properly, it's as if you're sitting in the interior of a new car, so all you need to do is interact with the car as you would if it was already there.

Virtual reality has this dual aspect to it. The people who create the systems have to be very skilled in this technology. For the people who use the systems, it's very intuitive. That's one of the big promises of virtual reality ­ that it opens up the resource to a wide range of people who don't have to modify their behavior to match the computer.

ISR: In addition to the automobile industry, what other industries do you see virtual reality playing a major role in?

DE: In a general sense, this sort of capability is beneficial to anyone who wants immersive access to spatial data. Spatial data can have a lot of different forms ­ in the automobile industry, it's these huge CAD databases; in the medical industry, it's patient information.

We're doing work with Stanford University where they take scanned views of a child's skull, and they're able to figure out how to do the surgical reconstruction of that skull. In the science field, there are things like molecular models or astronomical models or computational fluid dynamics ­ these are all three-dimensional models that are very difficult to analyze. They are either things that are too large for you to be able to see or too small.

By creating models that can be easily analyzed, data can be seen in a whole new way. There's a whole range of simulations ­ from driving and different types of transportation simulation to simulation that's done in the military sector. Again, these things are difficult to do in physical terms, but you can model them and interact with those models.

ISR: Speaking of the military sector, how is virtual reality being used in the military?

DE: In the military sector, there's a great focus on simulation because simulation enables you to do training and planning and rehearsal in a much more cost-effective way than if you were trying to do these things in a physical manner. Military organizations around the world are having huge budgetary constraints, and so they are trying to figure out how to keep their personnel at high levels of training without spending a lot of money on physical training. This is very important because the better the people are trained, the more they are able to do their assignments in a safe manner and a manner that reduces cost. The idea here is to have these simulations and to be able to do them via virtual reality to be able to generate computer models and to be able to interact with those models is a very beneficial thing.

ISR: Are there any non-wartime simulations that the military is using virtual reality for?

DE: The military's assignment is a pretty specialized assignment so they are concerned about being able to carry out missions with minimum cost of resources of all types. But it turns out that the problem has also related types of uses in other areas.

Basically, anybody who's responsible for decision-making in an assignment where there are a lot of different types of assets spread out over a large area, and you want to basically protect those assets and utilize them in the most cost-efficient manner, can benefit from doing these same sorts of simulations that the military is doing. So that's why the military may be taking a lead in some of these areas.

We also see requests for the same sort of capability from utilities, from civilian agencies, oil and gas companies. Basically anyone who has to control a large number of assets sees benefits in this type of approach.

ISR: What type of virtual reality (gloves, headgear, bodysuit) is most commonly used in the military?

DE: If you think of virtual reality as an interface a fluent interaction with spatial data is what you're trying to achieve it will be implemented in different ways depending on what your assignment is.

For the individual soldier, if you're trying to show them how to move from this position to that position and protect yourself and not be subject to attack from the opponent, then you can put an individual soldier into headgear, and now he can visualize a scene and he can move through a scene to practice that objective.

On the other hand, we see a lot of interest right now in products like ours (the Immersive WorkBench and the VersaBench) that give commanders a view of a battle scene or a battlefield (sometimes they use the term of a virtual "sandtable").

In the past, commanders would stand around a big table and it would have a map on it of land masses and oceans, and then they'd move ships around, and they'd move troop concentrations and basically plan their battle.

This table has all of the drawbacks of the physical kind of model: it takes a huge amount of space to do that; it takes a lot of people to be able to move those markers around; and it's all subject to people doing that task properly. You can take that same sort of information and produce it in a virtual sense, a computer-driven sense, display it in a immersive workbench that is a projected image on a table, and now you can interact with those models, driven by the computer and you can modify it very quickly. Even more importantly from the military standpoint, you can tie data to all of that information on the screen.

We did some work with the Naval Research Lab that was doing a project for the Marines. They showed a model of a simulated battlefield, and on that battlefield, there were more than 200 icons of items represented on that battlefield. That could be troop concentrations, it could be artillery placements, it could be ships at sea more than 200 of them on the table and each one of those had data tied to it. So, when you queried the icon that would represent a sensory ray, it would tell you the kind of sensors, the kind of information it was gathering, what sort of power requirements it had, any of the information that was in the database about that.

It enables the commander to make very intelligent decisions about the placement of these assets and how to utilize them for the mission.

ISR: Has virtual reality taken over the traditional means of training (i.e., flight simulators)?

DE: My understanding of the traditional flight simulators is where you would sit in a simulated cockpit, and the cockpit would be a physical cockpit, so again, it would be made of wood and foam, and it would have the control sticks and so on. Then, what was simulated was what they call the "out-the-window" scene. So, you would look out the cockpit windshield, and you would see a terrain that you were flying over and the terrain and the targets or the friendly forces that you were flying over when you carried out your mission.

The issue there is that every time you want to simulate a different type of aircraft, you have to change that physical interior that physical cockpit. It's obviously very different for something like a helicopter vs. a jet or a transport.

What virtual reality offers is the ability to have the interior be modeled just like the "out-the-window" scene is modeled in the automotive instance. So, now if you're talking about having the interior being modeled, you're able to have a much greater flexibility in the different types of aircraft that you're simulating. And, you're also reducing cost. And you're reducing size. If you're talking about one of these physical simulators, basically it's at some location that you, the pilot, has to go to. When you're talking about a computer-generated simulation where the interior as well as the out-the-window scene is simulated, that could be done in a van that could be moved to your location or wherever your mission is taking place. In that sense, I think it will have a big impact.

ISR: What kind of feedback have you received in particular, from the work you did with the Naval Research Lab?

DE: Sometimes it's difficult to get precise comments like, "Yes, this is great because of..." The implied benefits are very strong because they are implementing these types of solutions over and over and over again.

At the Naval Research Lab, we've put additional units in there. We've been able to use that experience to help us put units into different governmental organizations in the Navy, Army and Marines. Generally, they won't come back and give a testimonial, but the implied testimonial is there from their follow-up actions.

ISR: What does the future hold for virtual reality in the military?

DE: I think it will continue to grow and play a larger role. Again, training is a key issue for the military. It's very costly, but it's very important. If the personnel are not properly trained, they are not going to be able to properly carry out their mission.

Virtual reality, in that context, is an excellent way to provide training. In fact, when we go to some of these conferences, there are people who say that simulation is the way people can prepare to carry out their missions. I think it will have continued use and that it will swell over time.

COMMONLY USED VIRTUAL REALITY SYSTEMS HEAD MOUNTED DISPLAYS (HMDs) Most descriptions of virtual reality include goggles or a helmet-type device known as an HMD. These use small LCD or CRT monitors in front of each eye to generate images perceived by the wearer as three-dimensional. HMDs are typically used in training environment, such as flight simulators, where total immersion in the simulation is required. HAPTIC DISPLAYS Haptic displays are immersive viewing devices that involve the motion of the body as an aid to navigation within virtual worlds. Movement of the head, neck, shoulders and back, in particular, appear to physiologically orient the user within a visualization. Working with this type of device does not isolate the user from the real world. To answer a telephone or view a computer screen the user need only look away from the eyepiece, making haptic displays useful in design and engineering work. SPATIALLY IMMERSIVE DISPLAYS (CAVES) Spatially Immersive Displays (SIDS) are wrap-around (panoramic) video displays that create an unencumbered, ultra-wide field of view, walk-in immersive environment. SIDs are particularly popular for design review and training applications, where group viewing of relatively low detail simulations is required. VIRTUAL MODEL DISPLAYS (VMDs) Virtual Model Displays use projection technologies and reflection to render 3D models with appropriate motion parallax to create the appearance of a "real" object on a table top or work surface. Virtual Model Display systems are generally well suited to group collaboration with small teams gathering around the workbench-type display.

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