They obviously showed a lot of meticulously mated actual 3D components but those were all prepared in a CAD program.
Sure, the VR sketch might be useful, but the visual part of the video is quite a lot of marketing spin when it’s not showing the abstract lines.
And I’m not sure that VR is the best way to “feel” a car in this way either. A car is an extension of your body, so it’s just as important where/what your shoulders, knees and legs are/feel as to what the eyes can see.
I can't imagine it being the most efficient development tool, but I think for overall "feel", VR could have a legitimate use case.
For example, you're designing the car on the computer. You put on the VR headset, and suddenly your computer chair becomes the driver's seat. You can look around at your surroundings. Do the dash controls and buttons feel like they're in a good location? Does reaching for the handbrake feel natural or is it too far forward or back? If you look in the rear view mirror do you have a good view, or is the back window causing it to be limited?
Then you can quickly jump out of VR, make a few adjustments, and jump back in. Or get in VR and quickly A/B test different multiple saved versions of the interior.
It would also be good for general feedback. Get some people off the street and toss them in VR to walk around your car. I could see it being more effective and accurate than looking at photos, or 3D renders.
>And I’m not sure that VR is the best way to “feel” a car in this way either. A car is an extension of your body, so it’s just as important where/what your shoulders, knees and legs are/feel as to what the eyes can see.
Compared to looking at a flat computer screen, I would think this would certainly be a move in the right direction.
It's unclear from the article what Gravity Sketch offers that absolutely requires VR to get the several orders of magnitude improvement that is claimed:
> "If you wanted to make an interior and an exterior, you're still talking months," versus approximately 20 hours in the VR tool, he says.
If Gravity Sketch were on a traditional 2D screen instead of in VR, would the designers still accomplish in hours what used to take months? Conversely, if the VR visualization were to be added to the tools and processes that currently take months to prototype a model, would a similar boost in productivity be observed?
Basically any usage of VR outside of gaming right now is guaranteed to just be marketing nonsense. The hardware simply isn’t there for real world professional usage as a productivity enhancing device. Some day we’ll be there, but the current state of even the most advanced HMDs is little beyond toy prototypes at this point.
I should have included art as well. There's definitely a lot of cool visual stuff being done. But the ergonomics just aren't there yet for the use cases constantly being touted in the media like virtual desktops and CAD modeling.
You could not be more wrong. A lot of new employee safety training is moving to VR, backup NFL quarterbacks are practicing in VR (since the starting quarterbacks get all the actual time in practice), this is already happening. Not vaporware.
>"Curious to hear what you thought the blockers were?"
1. Resolution is hopelessly too low for working with text
2. Ergonomics too awkward to wear for 8 hours at a time.
3. Total lack of multi-plane focus, no ability to sense depth beyond a few meters
These are strictly true for every HMD available, having owned and worked with them all extensively since DK2. I wish it wasn't true either, but it's just where we're at. One big thing that has been solved is tracking though. It's easy to forget what a quantum leap Lighthouse was in consumer grade tracking technology. Having sub-millimeter precise tracking and pose estimation was a huge part of getting VR to an MVP. That gives me hope the other problems can be solved, but there's a long way to go with the need for things like integrated eye tracking, foveated rendering, and full vision FOV being table stakes for a real consumer product.
All these things are solvable, and there are consumer hmds coming that will solve some of them. Resolution upgrades are happening, ergonomics will improve. One problem with getting these features fast tracked in an HMD is the industry focus on gaming and media and keeping costs low for consumers. A high price enterprise focused HMD with all of the features you mentioned might work with the right software and clients.
No, it's definitely the hardware. Hardware makers like to tout that VR is waiting for its "killer app." What's really missing still is the "killer hardware." They're all still devkits (speaking as someone who owns one of each of the top headsets), it's just that when FB bought Oculus, suddenly there was a mad rush to plop the "consumer-ready" label on them. But we're not there yet, which can be evidenced by the re-orgs at Oculus.
You can't make Angry Birds or w/e on the VR equivalent of a Blackberry. No one's made the iPhone yet.
Yes, but I want to point out on odd edge-cases that's not always true.
For example, when designing something for 3dprinting, I sometimes prefer modeling programs over CAD programs because I have control over, for example, however a sphere is made up (the style of polygons, tesselation, that sort of thing). When you're slicing for a 3d printer, you can get odd bugs if your stl is made in a non-optimal way.
I've used most of those tools, they are all pretty terrible to use. You can't very easily take a rendering engine designed for massive geometric modelling and just plug VR into it without major performance sacrifices. I always got a headache after using them.
> I’m not sure that VR is the best way to “feel” a car in this way either.
I'm pretty sure it isn't. Just like about everything in human experience, almost nothing can be replicated just as well in VR. VR can give you a rough sense of space, but your body has no sensation, no touch, no feedback, it's so far from reality that you can't really just rely on VR to design things.
Plus, there are things that you don't notice in short time but need to "sink in" with everyday and long-term usage. This is also very hard to replicate in VR.
Sure, the VR sketch might be useful, but the visual part of the video is quite a lot of marketing spin when it’s not showing the abstract lines.
And I’m not sure that VR is the best way to “feel” a car in this way either. A car is an extension of your body, so it’s just as important where/what your shoulders, knees and legs are/feel as to what the eyes can see.