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There was a landmark moment this month when Oculus Rift started taking orders for its virtual reality headset, billed as an affordable and capable product for mainstream consumer use.
The £500 Oculus Rift headset requires a £1,000 computer to run but, even at that high cost of entry, enthusiasts, primarily video gamers, are expected to buy the peripheral in droves.
Companies such as Sony, Samsung and HTC also have similar virtual reality (VR) headsets in development that are expected to be available soon. Experts expect the market to grow slowly at first but to be worth up to £48 billion by 2025.
Apart from consumers, the first sector expected to embrace VR is engineering. The first prototype Oculus Rift headset was available four years ago. The technology instantly attracted the attention of large firms looking to improve their R&D and innovation processes. Oculus Rift kits have also been seen on stands at industrial exhibitions.
However, it was only last month, at engineering software firm Autodesk’s users’ conference, that I experienced for the first time a compelling VR demonstration. Part of Autodesk’s Live Design project, the demo used a Revit model imported into 3DStudio Max, Autodesk’s software for professional 3D graphics modelling and animation. It was then given realtime interactive features, using the firm’s Stingray rendering software.
The demo started above San Francisco in the clouds, before swooping to street level and into a penthouse apartment. There, you could rearrange furniture, draw blinds, open doors and go into other rooms and onto the balcony. You could also reveal the structural framework and ducting, change materials, and move windows and walls.
Chris Bradshaw, Autodesk’s senior vice-president of media and entertainment, says: “The innovative part is translating the Revit model. For a long time people have been trying to do VR in software engines designed for producing video games. They can get the structures, but struggle with other data, such as materials, geometry and lighting – data that we can bring in from building information modelling, and optimise and display VR. The next steps will be to input simulation data.”
The fidelity of the graphics was high, the interaction sufficient to be immersive. But most impressive was that VR here finally seemed to have a use. The demo offered a glimpse of what it would be like to visualise and adjust engineering drawings in a realtime VR environment, and preview an entire building or product.