Virtual reality and design - Methods

As we showed in the previous article , virtual reality technologies give companies control over real time and open up new perspectives:

• tests and trials impossible in the real world;

• multiplication of choices, architectures, combinations, colors ;

• integration of end-users into the design team (thanks to interactive simulation, they can evaluate the future product);

• staging products in different environments ;

• collaborative engineering with other professions, other cultures or other countries, with a common working language: interactive images.

All sectors of industry are concerned: construction, automotive, medicine, engineering, commerce, aeronautics, oil, etc. The development of information exchange networks around the Internet is also a formidable medium for the development of these technologies.

We now turn to the question of how to develop a virtual reality project within a company. This is no coincidence, since unlike CAD, there are as yet no specific applications for many sectors of industry. To maintain a competitive edge, it may therefore be in a company's interest to develop its own software applications that take advantage of the unprecedented possibilities offered by virtual reality technologies.

First, we present Virtual Reality-Assisted Design (VRAD), which is CAD's counterpart to virtual reality, and put virtual reality into perspective in today's corporate organization (virtual design digital chain).

We then detail the problems to be solved (including data exchange), before turning to the integration of virtual reality into the design process. We conclude with a presentation of a method for developing a virtual reality project within a company.