Consider how much time you typically spend using 2D displays on your laptop and mobile devices—and then try to picture spending that much time in a VR headset such as the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. Most people experience mild nausea after about 20-30 minutes.
So if we can’t spend more than half an hour wearing a virtual reality headset, what is the point of a virtual reality desktop platform?
Envelop VR is a virtual reality company backed by Google Ventures and led by Cofounder and CEO Bob Berry in Washington State. It claims to have developed the world’s first fully immersive computing platform.
For engineers who have enough of an interest in virtual reality to have already purchased and set up either an HTC Vive or Oculus Rift headset, Envelop VR is now available for download via its public beta software, which allows you to be virtually immersed in your normal Windows desktop.
The extra piece of hardware you will need is a webcam, which is pointed at your keyboard and fed in real time to your virtual reality headset. You can place your windows anywhere in a virtual 360-degree sphere, resize them and move them around to your liking.
The ability to show customers, clients and colleagues a 3D model design or finished product model directly from your company’s website may prove advantageous if virtual reality ever becomes a noticeably ubiquitous consumer technology.
This is one of the prime arguments in favor of virtual reality as an industrial application: it’s a huge visualization advantage.
Taking a tour of a factory, building or facility before it’s built using something as familiar as a Windows desktop in Envelop VR’s software could prove useful for job site proposals. It’s crucial for professionals such as architects to communicate their work in a visually stunning way. This is something I’ve heard time and again over a drink, after a failure and yes, in a bar.
Another interesting potentiality is the elimination of multiple display monitors and hyperextended desktops. But still, who cares about minimizing windows in VR if your display is making you want to retch?
It’s true that virtual reality has a number of obstacles to conquer in order to eliminate this nasty side effect of wearing an LED or OLED screen so close to the face. It’s a prevalent issue despite increasing frame rates, lower latency and faster GPUs.
If we are really beginning a new age of immersive computing, then maybe Envelop VR is onto something big. But has it really created the world’s first fully immersive computing platform? Will engineers be able to use a VR headset comfortably for long enough periods of time on a regular basis to make it worthwhile?
In this exclusive interview with ENGINEERING.com, Jeff Hansen, VP of business development at Envelop VR, discusses the obstacles facing widespread virtual reality adoption in industrial sectors.
Finding engineering applications for virtual reality headsets is challenging and Hansen’s been busy breaking down the barriers to the enterprise market for virtual reality. He’s been out in front of many Fortune 500 companies and says that though the CAD giants have standalone modules that prevent them being used as part of a virtual reality desktop, the possibility of an analogous workflow using VR-enabled desktops, an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headset and a program like Envelop VR could bring applications such as CAD to VR.
Where did you start your search for interesting enterprise customers and industrial engineering sectors in Envelop VR?
When we started looking at the enterprise opportunities, the use cases that we evaluated were across the board—lots of different verticals, lots of different industries. As we looked at the opportunities, we realized quickly that the companies already needed to be well-versed in 3D graphics, 3D images and other 3D assets. We weren’t about to go out and try to teach the market the value of visualization or utilizing 3D assets, if they weren’t already using them. Otherwise, why get into VR? With that as a filter, clearly engineering-oriented roles have percolated right to the top. We’ve been pretty proactive about going after engineering-heavy industries like aerospace, automotive, big machinery and so on. I’ve had conversations with major engineering-services companies for internal utilization of our software. For them to do development work on and add our service-as-a-service differentiates them from their customers.
Envelop VR acts as a bridge to bring Windows-compatible applications into VR. We’ve solved one problem for engineers, which is that instead of having many monitors, using a VR headset they can use 2D applications like a web browser, they can be doing research, using a CAD/CAM software. They can be checking their feeds and sending emails—whatever the workflow tool might be—and it can be available to them in the virtual environment.
Why should engineers be interested in visualizing in VR? What are some advantages of using Envelop VR?
The real value comes from utilizing our SDK [software development kit] to understand the capabilities and advantages of working with a traditionally 2D application in an immersive environment such as virtual reality. Let’s take an example of working with CATIA. If you’re an engineer and you’re working on your CATIA model, say you’re rotating it on this 2D platform and trying to visualize it in three dimensions. Just having that object come into the VR space and being able to stand next to it if it’s big enough, on a 1:1 scale, manipulating it—there’s a huge advantage for visualizing.
If companies and engineers are saying “hey, why do I need to have this?”, well, all you have to do is look at the money that many of these companies have already spent on CAVE [computer-aided virtual environments] systems and on 3D printing. There isn’t a single customer that I’ve had this conversation about virtual reality with who hasn’t invested in 3D printing in some way. They want to visualize a product in some way.
They’re probably skeptical about a lot of what they see in VR because it’s 360-degree videos and gaming content. So I respect and understand why they would be skeptical, but if they see what the headsets are capable of in the context of comparing them to existing CAVE systems, they’ll see that we are ahead of the game.
Can you give an example of an evolved capability for engineers who have moved from a CAVE environment to the new wave of virtual reality headsets like the HTC Vive?
We worked on a proof-of-concept with a large automotive company. It uses CATIA and Excel internally for workflows. It loves CATIA, but it also calls [the software] “the troll,” because it charges for every single action within the application. So [the automotive company] is a little reticent of a vendor like that, who already has so much control of its environment, to also control its VR application platform.
If the employees say that they’re going to use CATIA’s standalone module for VR, that’s great for someone who is always using only CATIA and wants to visualize it in VR. But most engineers don’t work that way. They also want to have their web browser open, their workflow in Excel open and so on. If they’re using just a dedicated viewer to use CAD software in VR, they do not have access to anything of these other analogous workflow software.
Let’s take an engineer who’s working on a 3D asset as an example. He’s using Excel for workflow and he’s spending time in CATIA. After rotating an object, he’s found an issue. So he takes an image of the issue and couples it with some text in his Excel sheet, for documentation reasons. If you’re just working in CATIA in VR and you’re just working in its module, you’re not going to have access to anything but CATIA.
The Bottom Line
When it comes to VR on a desktop, it’s best to try it for yourself and see.
It seems that Envelop VR allows you to work in CAD programs from the major engineering software firms like Autodesk and Dassault Systèmes. Being immersed in a promising and dynamic visualization environment like VR—without giving up access to additional and analogous programs to maintain flexibility and continuity in your overall workflow—seems like a good possibility for enthusiasts and long-term initiates.
If you own or have access to an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headset, you can download Envelop VR directly from the company’s site or download it from Steam.