Jaguar Land Rover: stepping into a virtual future
Clive Goldthorp
Taking it to the next dimension...
Jaguar Land Rover’s new, £2m., ‘Virtual Reality
Centre’ was opened at the Design and Engineering Centre in Gaydon, Warwickshire
yesterday.
The ‘state-of-the-art’ design facility combines advanced
audio visual technologies with the projection power of the world’s highest
resolution projectors and enables Designers and Engineers to see and interact
with life-size, three-dimensional, models of vehicles and components. The system
will significantly accelerate product development cycles by reducing the need
for physical prototypes and so save time and money.
Jaguar Land Rover maintain that the new four-walled facility creates
the most advanced virtual reality environment for simulating vehicle exteriors
and interiors and making bodywork appear solid or transparent yet seen in the
Automotive Industry.
Eight Sony SRX-S105 ultra-high resolution projectors – each
capable of delivering the world's highest resolution imagery – provide
a visual quality that outstrips existing industry virtual reality Walls and
CAVES and produce photo quality interactive 3D imagery where pixilation on the
rear-projection screens is almost impossible to see. The user wears 3-D glasses
to experience 'ultimate realism' with an ultra-high resolution that is four-times
the definition of full-High Definition TV.
Brian Waterfield, JLR Principal Engineer and Virtual Reality Centre
Manager said: "Jaguar Land Rover has taken another giant step forward in
its thrust for technological advancement; enhancing its design and engineering
process to enable quicker, more robust decision making. This facility offers
a different level of engineering, one that will help future our products to
meet the demand of an ever changing market place."