Engineers now inspect full-size vehicles in 4K virtual reality with sub-millimeter precision before manufacturing, catching quality issues early instead of in late-stage prototypes. The workflow has become mandatory in vehicle development, saving massive time by letting engineering, design, and manufacturing teams collaborate from the start.
Using the technology with very high visual fidelity. So we are doing real-time ray tracing in VR. We were doing 4K real-time ray tracing, and we provided engineering integrity to the data. So you could measure to a submillimeter accuracy. You could MRI slice through a whole vehicle with an engine and a powertrain in it, and then have it also reflect the natural, the environment that it was in, provide the right look and— Presence and shape and form. And the vehicle was life-size in a kind of like an empty room that you could walk around and interrogate. So now engineering, design, and manufacturing could all come together, and then they could actually look at the vehicle tolerances as manufactured, not as built. So you could say, this is what the company, like the assembly process, is capable of manufacturing. Is that acceptable build quality for the end customer? Like, we produce this with Six Sigma, we produce this with Four Sigma. What's acceptable? And then what do we need to change? And so those discussions happened a lot earlier than in the past when the line was tooled and then you would build a prototype and then go with a marker and look at the areas that were really bad for the first few runs of the vehicle. So it really was a game changer. And the thing that made it work was that the teams came together and it's part of the product development process. So no vehicle has made it forward that doesn't run through that process. And once that happened, once it became like a check that needed to be done, then it really legitimized it. And then the value itself was there because it was a huge time saver.
