Two giants of the technology world are combining to deliver breakthrough Immersive Engineering for the industrial metaverse. Immersive technology has been around in the engineering – and specifically in the design – space for some time, with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality solutions now fairly widely available. However, things have gone one step further with the announcement that Siemens Digital Industries Software and Sony will be delivering on their next-generation immersive engineering roadmap that brings together Siemens’ NX software for product engineering with Sony’s breakthrough head-mounted display (HMD) to enable the industrial metaverse.
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Sony and Siemens Collaboration
The XR HMD (SRH-S1) features Sony’s high-definition 1.3-type OLED Microdisplays with 4K resolution, and its proprietary rendering technology enables real-time, high-definition and realistic rendering of 3D objects. It also has a pair of controllers optimised for intuitive interaction with 3D objects and precise pointing. The head-mounted display is also optimized for extended creative use, designed with comfort and stability in mind.
“We embarked on this collaborative project with Sony to deliver the power of the industrial metaverse to our community of designers, engineers and manufacturers directly in our flagship product engineering software,” said Bob Haubrock, senior vice president, Product Engineering Software, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “After previewing the HMD at CES last year, our collective teams have built a set of tools that revolutionize how mixed reality is used in the engineering space - to not only support global collaboration based on high-fidelity 3D models, but to enable co-creation directly on vital 3D CAD data in a managed, secure environment. Today, we are making this next generation set of technologies available to our customers.”
The Industrial Metaverse Vision
“Since announcing our collaboration with Siemens at CES 2024, we’ve had opportunities to get direct feedback from Siemens’ customers about the technology, and as Siemens’ NX users ourselves, we were excited that many of them share our enthusiasm for the potential of Immersive Engineering,” said Seiya Amatatsu, Incubation Centre, XR Technology Development Division, Sony Corporation.
“We envision the industrial metaverse as a virtual world that is nearly indistinguishable from reality, enabling people — along with AI — to collaborate in real time to address real-world challenges,” stated Siemens CEO Roland Busch back in January 2024. “This will empower customers to accelerate innovation, enhance sustainability and adopt new technologies faster and at scale, leading to a profound transformation of entire industries and our everyday lives. Together with our customers and partners, Siemens is proud to announce new products that will bring the industrial metaverse a step closer to all of us.”
“Siemens is making the industrial metaverse more accessible so that our customers can use it to solve their real-world problems faster, more sustainably and with greater efficiency – and we will make it available to companies of all sizes, so that everybody can turn their big ideas into world-changing innovations,” said Cedrik Neike, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO of Siemens Digital Industries.
The Role of Immersive Technology in Product Engineering
“Siemens’ immersive technology helps our designers and engineers see, design and edit parts more easily with the unique controllers, enabling our customers to experience their car at human-scale before it is built and help stakeholders from production easily collaborate with designers and engineers to validate parts before manufacturing,” said Ian Briggs, Founder and Head of Design, Briggs Automotive Company (BAC).
Siemens’ immersive technology toolset brings the power of mixed reality to the product engineering and manufacturing community, enabling high-fidelity mixed reality and 3D-focused collaboration. Siemens’ Immersive Engineering solutions include:
- NX Immersive Explorer: A headset-agnostic solution that designers and engineers use to conduct informal design reviews and collaborate using 3D CAD data derived from Siemens’ NX software for product engineering.
- NX Immersive Designer: Designed from the ground up to take advantage of the capabilities of Sony’s HMD and creative controllers, NX Immersive Designer enables designers and engineers to interact, manipulate and collaborate around graphically rich 3D product models natively in NX, without the need for additional preparation or software. Using Sony’s Ring and Pointer controllers for object interaction and precise 3D geometry manipulation, designers and engineers can interact directly with product prototypes, NX commands and menus.
- NX Immersive Collaborator: NX Immersive Collaborator builds on the capabilities of NX Immersive Explorer and Designer to allow organizations of all sizes to take advantage of both co-located and remote design review with multiple participants. NX Immersive Collaborator requires Siemens’ cloud-enabled NX X to host design collaboration and review sessions – participants can join using local VR or desktop view for broad collaboration options. Value-based licensing tokens are used for only hosting sessions, with participants able to join remotely for free.
NX Immersive Designer is available for all NX customers with the latest updates and through Siemens’ value-based licensing. NX Immersive Collaborator will be available later this month with the NX X update and also through value-based licensing. The NX Immersive Engineering tools have been developed to exclusively work with Sony’s HMD offering that include 4K OLED Microdisplays and dedicated controllers.
Bringing Immersive Technology to Life
With the growing importance of immersive technology in engineering, the collaboration between Siemens and Sony marks a new era in the industrial metaverse. This next-generation set of tools is poised to enhance the way engineers and designers work, collaborate, and innovate. Immersive technology is truly transforming the way industries can approach product engineering, bringing high fidelity and real-time interaction to the forefront of the design process.
