Blurring the Lines of Reality at Autodesk’s VR Centre of Excellence

Make your reality virtual at GTC Europe in Munich from 10-12 October.
October 2, 2017 by Dominic Eskofier

Virtual reality has long been the stuff of science fiction. No more.

VR is touching our lives in myriad ways — from making it easier for designers to build our favorite products, to allowing consumers to plan their perfect kitchen, to revolutionizing how we play games.

Autodesk is pushing the boundaries of VR and its VR Center of Excellence in Munich is a testament to that.

Photo courtesy of Autodesk.

Seeing Is Believing

Autodesk’s vision was to create a room where virtual, augmented and mixed reality can be easily explored in real time.

The VR Center offers visitors a mind-blowing experience that blurs the lines between what is real and what is virtual. A three-sided greenscreen provides a backdrop that can change and adapt in real time. Visitors can also explore their individual use cases through Autodesk’s tracked mini-powerwall, made up of 4K screens, with integrated tracked user perspective and objects.

Any data can be displayed in the VR Center of Excellence, from robot arms to milling machines and even entire production lines assembled in a factory. There is no building too small, no infrastructure too large that can’t be dreamed up at the facility. And, thanks to VRED technology, users can collaborate on projects with colleagues from across the globe, in real time, in a virtual world.

All of the amazing capabilities on offer at the center are powered by Fujitsu CELSIUS M740 and R940 workstations running NVIDIA Quadro pro graphics.

“NVIDIA Quadro allows us to provide our clients with stunning graphics, which bring their designs to reality and allows them to be explored in ways which were not possible before,” explains Simon Nagel, visualisation guru for automotive at Autodesk. “Without the power of NVIDIA GPUs, we wouldn’t be able to provide the experiences we are creating.”

Photo courtesy of Autodesk.

Explore VR at GTC Europe

At GTC Europe from 10-12 October in Munich, attendees will have the chance to learn more about Autodesk’s groundbreaking VR center.

Autodesk’s Nagel and Danny Tierney, visualisation specialist for automotive, will discuss an array of actual use cases in a talk on “Building Autodesk’s VR Center of Excellence with NVIDIA Quadro”. They’ll explore how VR has changed in the past few years from something that was largely consumer gaming oriented to something that has valuable implications in the areas of automotive, architecture, manufacturing and construction.

GTC Europe attendees should also prepare themselves to be wowed as they journey through the VR Village and these other can’t-miss opportunities:

  • Experience NVIDIA Holodeck for yourself: See the future of working collaboratively in VR.
  • Isaac will demonstrate how AI and VR can be used to create machines which are smart enough to safely interact with us in our daily lives. At GTC, you’ll be able to challenge our Isaac AI to a game of dominoes.
  • See NVIDIA 360-degree video stitching SDK and learn about how we make VR applications even more immersive through our VRWorks Audio SDK.
  • Learn about the future of VR in the Partner Pavilion at the VR Village:
    • Varjo Technologies gives a sneak peek of its human-eye resolution Bionic Display, which will change the possibilities of professional VR use for years to come.
    • XMG showcases how VR of the future will cut the cord and become wireless with a collaborative training/maintenance demo from its software partner PIXYZ – showing highly requested features for B2B clients.
    • VRgineers show VRHero 5K, a crisp image HMD used by professionals and enterprises to work with VR.
    • Innoactive presents the Innoactive Hub mixed-reality enterprise platform as well as the Digital Reality Hub, a collaboration project with the Volkswagen Group.
    • Get your hands in the game and experience the future of haptic gloves with NeuroDigital’s Gloveone.
    • Learn about how Optis is changing the game for manufacturers with Virtual Reality and experience the world’s first B2B implementation of our VRWorks Audio SDK
    • See StarVR‘s natural ultra-wide field of view and invisible pixels running PresenZ revolutionary volumetric movies.
    • Audi and strategic visualisation partners ZeroLight showcase the Audi VR experience – a pioneering way for Audi customers to configure and explore their new car.

Don’t miss your chance to explore the world of virtual reality with Autodesk and others at GTC Europe, 10-12 October in Munich. Register now.