The reality of virtual reality

The application of virtual reality (VR) in industry was the subject of a seminar at Cadcentre in Cambridge. The event, organised for UK VR Forum, the UK DTI’s VR awareness programme, prompted discussion on what is VR, highlighting the differences between immersive and non‐immersive techniques and where these are being applied. Three VR application case studies published by the Forum are described: design of a railcar by The Engineering Link, designing for assembly and maintenance by human operators in aircraft by Short Brothers and the installation design of an offshore oil platform by Brown and Root for Conoco. These examples illustrate the potential that VR has to achieve very large reductions in the timescales and costs of large projects.