Virtalis VR systems to drive virtual engineering centre

The £5.3 million centre is being built under an initiative from Liverpool university in partnership with the Northwest Aerospace Alliance, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (Daresbury Laboratory), BAE Systems, Morson Projects and Airbus. Dr Antony Robotham, executive director, says that the centre aims to provide a focal point for world class virtual engineering business, research, education and skills development for the aerospace industry. "We analysed a whole raft of factors when marking the tenders, but Virtalis was able to display technical competence, a great depth of support and value for money," states Robotham. "Theirs was the most complete solution and they have come up with a refined design that builds on our original specification. We will end up with a very high resolution, bespoke, 13m2 screen on our active wall, which will allow us to display engineering systems at a 1:1 scale in stereo," he adds. Robotham says that the centre's VR facilities will allow it to draw on advanced 3D visualisation, immersive tracking and real-time user interaction, through virtual touch. He explains that Virtalis is supplying a two-channel Christie M-Series WU7 projected active wall, with Vicon optical tracking, linked to an ActiveSpace with nVisor SX111 head mounted display to allow two people to be simultaneously fully immersed. "Complex engineering solutions are easier to understand in 3D," comments Robotham. "We think VEC's facilities will be used by companies and their suppliers to communicate ideas in spheres like composite materials, computational fluid dynamics and finite element stress analysis. "More intuitive interaction with virtual models leads to speedier communication between different groups of people… We are already engaging with individual companies about specific VR applications and looking forward to working with Virtalis in the long-term."