New Software for VR Motion Platforms

VR, of course, stands for virtual reality, which is where you put on a special headset. That headset envelops your eyes so that you cannot see the outside world. It has a small screen in front of each eye, and all you see is what those screens show you.

Those screens typically show you a 3D  world, just like you would experience in a computer game. Only now you don’t feel you’re outside the world watching it… you feel you’re IN IT.

Enter VR Platforms

Until recently, the only way to move forward in that virtual world was to either use a small joystick that came along with the headset or to use the menu that appeared in the virtual world (the menu would have selectable commands for moving in a chosen direction). 

But now, there are ‘VR motion platforms‘, similar to treadmills, so that you can walk in any direction on the motion platform and correspondingly walk in the virtual world, which makes for a VR experience that is dramatically more realistic.

The Software Problem and the Solution

Until recently, there was no publicly-available software to make a virtual world accessible to a headset-platform combo system. The available software linked virtual worlds to only VR headsets.

But now, with the new ‘Vision’ software by Alternate States, you can walk in the virtual world by walking on the motion platform.

Snowing??

The software brings other unique functionality to the VR technology as well. Jake White, Managing Director of Alternate States, said in conversation with us:

Jake White

“We’re developing weather so you can have it snowing, or you can have it raining… just for instance, if you take Aspen, in America, where it snows all the time… if someone is building a building out there, they won’t want it to be a sunny environment, they would want it to be able to see it snowing all the time,  because that’s what everybody goes to Aspen for.”

Architects: Upgrade Your Portfolios with VR

Jake also mentioned how ‘Vision’ was helping architects replace traditional portfolios (pictures and handbooks) with a more immersive version:

Jake White

” … we’d record their previous building projects with a 3D laser scanner and into a point cloud.  Then to the Vision platform we’d bring the actual 3D scan into the (virtual) world so that you can walk with the platform around the actual building project. “

Remote VR Construction Updates

The new software additionally makes it possible for stakeholders residing away from the construction site to view the current state of the project in VR.

A 3D laser scanner is deployed to scan the site and create a virtual 3D model of it. Stakeholders at distant locations can then walk around the model in VR and assess progress (using either a headset-platform combo or a PC).

How to Get Started with VR

Simple: just tap The Magnum Group’s finely honed skills in the area. Send us 2D plans and we will create a 3D model of your building or product using Revit. To start the process, just send us a message using the contact form next to this article.

To your success in VR,