TechViz - Blog - AR / VR for engineering

At its WWDC 2023 keynote, Apple finally unveiled Apple Vision Pro, his long-awaited mixed reality headset. Even if most of the features had already been leaked to the press, the moment is still dramatic.

Are you tired of viewing your 3D data on a computer screen, unable to fully grasp the potential of your designs? Look no further than VR prototyping. With VR technology, product design process can become more efficient and accurate, by allowing designers and engineers to visualize and test designs in a virtual environment.

The history of VR has often been influenced by the defense industry. One of the first VR projects was developed in the 1960s for a US military combat system. Virtual reality has always played a significant role in the military field and was adopted by all services: army, navy, and air force. It is mostly used for army training purposes, but there are other use cases where VR is a powerful tool.

Here’s the 2022 review TechViz team experts carry out every year to help you choose the best XR headsets for professional use. There are indeed many types of XR headsets around: tethered, all-in-one, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality… It can be confusing, especially when manufacturers use their own terminology.

Studies predict that professional use of Virtual Reality (VR) will increase tremendously in the next few years. Thus, the Metaverse is more and more at the heart of all discussions, as the mean that will transform the way we connect, interact and grow, through AR and VR. In order to optimize their products and lower their costs, most of the biggest industrial players have already adopted VR or AR systems to help them take more effective decisions for design and engineering. However, some companies remain reluctant to the change, and there is still a long way to go before VR becomes the norm in the industry.

Just one month ago, we learned that the Chinese internet giant ByteDance, owner of the popular Tik Tok app, would acquire Pico, the third-largest maker of VR headsets globally. This piece of news has created quite a buzz within the XR community as it sets the stage for head-on competition between Facebook / Oculus and ByteDance / Pico, not to mention Microsoft / HoloLens and the much-rumored future launch of an Apple headset. What is the impact for professional users of the foray of Big Tech into XR? Should they rejoice or worry? Are specialized makes doomed to disappear?

This article is the 2021 edition of a regular review the TechViz team carries out to help you navigate the market. There are indeed many types of XR headsets around: tethered, all-in-one, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality… This can sometimes be confusing, especially because every manufacturer uses its own terminology to boast the uniqueness of its technology.

There are several VR headsets types on the market, but the ones that are the most suited for vr engineering are PC-powered headsets because they rely on a powerfull system. Depending on your use case and the scale of your project, you can tailor your system to your needs in terms of processing power, screen resolution, storage, and so on.

Why is it so important to keep your VR hardware clean? Even if you’re not taking the COVID-19 situation into account, keeping your equipment free of dirt and germs is essential, especially if you share the same HMD or VR goggles with your colleagues. Would you like to get dry sweat, sebum, and bacteria every time you get into a VR session? No, thank you!