Dassault Sidebar:
Step Into a 3-D Reality
Print
E-mail
Michel Setboun
Anyone doubting the immersive power of virtual reality need only drop by Dassault Systèmes’ headquarters in Vélizy-Villacoublay, south of Paris, with an appointment, of course. Here, the company has built a virtual reality center dubbed LIVES — for Lifelike Immersive Virtual Experience Space — to show how far it has come in providing software to create 3-D virtual worlds and products, and to provide more than a hint to visiting and prospective clients of just how far it might take all this.
To see a video about Dassault Systèmes’ LIVES, click here.
At the center, two large glass walls and an acrylic floor function as a giant screen on which seven video projectors backed by 10 computers conjure a convincing 3-D set. As a user, you enter that world armed with only stereoscopic glasses and a navigator’s joystick; your every move is tracked by five cameras that allow for interaction with any one of 20 different environments, from city streets to an oil platform. Once you have walked into the screen and dodged the same iron pillar on the oil platform for the second time in the certainty that you were about to walk into it, you are ready to believe.
Olivier Alloyer, who as LIVES’ manager designed and oversaw the installation of the space, says that this year there will be improvements. These include adding new sets and, given Dassault Systèmes’ burgeoning relationship with Procter & Gamble, he says, “creating a virtual supermarket experience is my top priority.”
Other priorities include introducing “finger tracking,” in which participants will be able to feel objects in virtual reality — a car’s steering wheel, a broken pipe on that oil rig — via a high-tech tracking glove.
And far more is to come. Alloyer talks of using holographic systems to make virtual reality more lifelike, of tossing away the joystick and allowing users to touch the screens and move objects around with their hands. He also imagines avatars interacting across continents — in videoconferencing, say, or product design: “You might have a very big company with sites in France and the U.S. Teams could come together in a virtual environment to work on the same virtual product. This is not science fiction. It’s very close.”
