Talk about an unusual and cutting-edge way to interact with CAD and other design tools. Infinite Z, which bills itself as a startup although it's been around in development mode since 2007, has launched its first product: an immersive, interactive 3D environment that uses virtual-holographic 3D imagery to bring product designs to life.
Objects in zSpace appear "solid" in open space, allowing users to manipulate them directly as if they were real physical objects.
The zSpace platform, which comprises a proprietary stereoscopic display, trackable eyewear, and a new type of direct interaction stylus, works in concert with the company's software to display objects that appear "solid" in open spaces, allowing the engineer or designer to directly manipulate them as if they were handling real, physical objects. According to Infinite Z, the zSpace virtual-holographic objects, which appear with full color and at a high resolution, look remarkably similar to real physical objects. In combination with the direct interaction stylus, users can navigate, grab, slice, carve, zoom, and perform other common functions to explore 3D models in a natural manner that hasn't been possible using traditional input devices.
It's a bit hard to visualize without seeing the demo. zSpace isn't a tablet or a 3D display -- in fact, company officials say it's in a category by itself, as it redefines standard display and mouse interaction. Scott Harris, a long-time CAD consultant who's working with Infinite Z, says zSpace's unique method of interaction will make working with CAD, medical imaging, GIS, and media and entertainment applications far more intuitive. "It can made a lot of the things you do all the time much more efficient," he explains, "and it takes down some of the barriers people have when working with CAD systems." For example, he says, six-degrees-of-freedom operations are much more streamlined with the zSpace approach compared with traditional input tools.
Because zSpace employs virtual holographs, the object (in this case, a part or assembly) will look as if it's floating in front of you. Using the pencil-like stylus, which has some sort of laser beam in front, users can click on the object and rotate it around, and the object will appear to the user as if it's sitting directly in front of her on her desk, for example. The interaction paradigm really lends itself to design or concept review, Infinite Z officials assert, because you can put items up and place them in a scene just as if you're putting a phone on a table and without requiring the users to think about adding constraints.
Part of Infinite Z's mission here is to forge partnerships with providers of design tool software to encourage them to support the zSpace platform. To that end, the first iteration of zSpace, slated to ship in the first half of 2012 at a pricetag of around $6,000, will support Autodesk's Maya 3D animation software and its Showcase 3D rendering and presentation tool. The firm is working with other CAD, CAE, GIS, and animation software providers to expand support for the tool.
Interesting technology. What are there some industries where this is likely to get adopted quickly? Are there engineers who have been waiting for this type of technology to solve specific problems? You mentioned medical. Are there others? I can imagine this would have game applications, but that will probably require significant price reductions.
I'm not sure engineers are waiting for something like this, Rob, because I'm not sure you can really envision what exactly a holographic view is unless you see it and try it. That said, if a device like this works as promised and the company can gain some traction with a distribution channel and ISV support, I could imagine a host of applications and industries where it could be applied. I don't think it's really industry specific--just another way of looking at virtual images trying to make them more lifelike and helping to avoid some of the physical prototyping stages which is costly.
I'm wondering about the computational requirements of this system, and the required hardware. Apparently, from the website, one needs a higher end PC, Windows 7, and a stereo graphics card, and then you buy the special monitor/interactive screen, plus the stylus and glasses as pictured. So is this mostly off-the-shelf?
It strikes me that many of the advances and features we're attributing to CAD per se are actually visualization features or capabilities being added into CAD packages. In other words, if you go back to the SIGGRAPH conferences of a decade ago, you'll see all the 3D and rotating/360-degree view stuff, which is being folded into CAD now. So it's good stuff and I'm not denigrating it at all, just making the point that its roots seem to predate CAD. It's the availability of greater processing power on the desktop which enables these features to come to CAD today.
This will add another dimension to the design world for sure. This reminds of Arthur C Clarke and his famous point that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Visualization is definitely a core part of today's CAD offerings, Alex, and a critical element at that. And you are correct in pointing out that these capabilities are being folded in because of exponential leap in processing performance. Today's workstations, even high-end laptops, are perfectly capable of displaying life-life 3D images whereas in decades past, you need highly specialized workstations to do so.
This is fantastic! This isn't really engineering related, but years ago I was working on a very large Army project and this is exactly what they wanted. Of course, their interest was in looking at terrain before engaging the enemy. We saw a system at MIT that would project a hologram in space. This was 20 years ago, mind you. It did not require any special display technology, so you could walk around the hologram. On the other hand it took a large Connection Machine to compute the hologram (this would take the place of the graphics card) and had some very complex lasers and other devices to actually project the image.
In the engineering realm, I have seen some demand coming for 3D printers. This would be a better approach, I would think, in that you can interact with and modify the model. There would still be a place for the 3D printer, but this might be cheaper and more functional.
The 3D printing revolution seems to have a knack for quickly moving technology ahead by way of collaborative effort and even a little friendly competition -- all of course in the name of scientific advancement.
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