VISUALIZATION
FOCUS ON: IMMERSIVE DESIGN22 DE^ | Technology for Optimal Engineering Design August 2019 /// DigitalEngineering247.com
The answer to these questions is: It all depends on the applica-
tion and the support infrastructure.
“When employed by individual engineers, HMDs provide
highly immersive visualization and experiential evaluation of ser-
vice and assembly requirements during product development and
process planning,” says Eric Kam, manufacturing business chan-
nel marketing and alliances director at the ESI Group. “For buy-
off reviews or other gated milestones in an engineering lifecycle,
HMDs can make it difficult for teams to participate in virtual
reviews. Collaboration between engineers in a common virtual
environment, but each using their own HMD stations, is a way to
allow collaboration. However, this too has its limits.”
That said, a lot of the MR system’s performance is deter-
mined by its support systems. The number of MR system users
able to view the digital product representation or digital twin
during a design review depends on the capacity of its network
and servers. If these two elements are up to the task, then a dis-
tributed development team can often expect a satisfactory expe-
rience, regardless of location.Challenges and Shortcomings
There is no doubt that digital reality technologies in general, and
MR systems in particular, have much to offer design engineers. An
honest look at the technologies involved indicates that all of the
options require improvement.
What’s holding these systems back? The tug of war between
cost, compute resources and ergonomics tops the list of reasons
for the slow adoption rate.
“Existing MR systems do not seem to penetrate far enough
into potential low-cost applications, which would drive wider
adoption,” says Zielinski. “The bulk of applications centers on
higher-power, Linux-based systems and have not effectively inte-
grated with the mainstream of lower-cost IoT applications.”Additionally, the number of device types supporting MR
points to the fact that the technology still hasn’t undergone the
shakedown process that culls out unwieldy designs.
“Current hardware solutions are uncomfortable to wear due to
where the center of gravity is, weight and in some cases excessive
heat,” says Theorem Solutions’ Francis. “Moreover, many people
do not like to wear them because they are neither aesthetically
pleasing nor are they able to look at other people without the
device impeding their view.”
Microsoft considered these shortcomings when it designed
HoloLens 2, and aimed to address all of the issues. Only time and
the market will tell how successful it was.
As for performance, MR systems face challenges in meeting
the high standards of design engineers, specifically in the areas of
data handling and presentation.
“To have interaction with the elements overlaid in AR to be
useful in an MR context, the latency between the action and a vis-
ible result must be low enough to have a meaningful connection
between the content and the user,” says Zielinski. “This implies
that the connected device that we wish to interact with must have
a reasonably small communication latency, generally implying
reasonable bandwidth, small communications packet size and
a processor capable of supporting the application and backhaul
infrastructure. This doesn’t mean that the processor necessarily
has to be more expensive, but the scalability and latency of the
architecture has to be considered seriously.”
In information presentation, MR systems still wrestle with is-
sues like field of view and resolution. “For operator visibility, if the
field of view is too narrow compared to real visibility, then some
conclusions from a review might skew in the wrong direction,”
says ESI Group’s Kam.
As for resolution, to correctly address many of the challenges
confronting development teams, the visual fidelity and image
sharpness need to be very high.What’s Next?
It is likely that MR will follow in the footsteps of VR, carving out
a niche in mainstream consumer entertainment systems first, and
then using that position in the market as a springboard for design/
development, industrial and healthcare applications. At this point,
early adopters will move into a second wave of ecosystems as stan-
dardized methods become more available. DETom Kevan is a freelance writer/editor specializing in engineering and
communications technology. Contact him via [email protected].INFO ➜Bresslergroup: Bresslergroup.com
➜ESI Group: ESI-Group.com
➜Microsoft: Microsoft.com
➜Theorem Solutions: Theorem.com
For more information on this topic, visit DigitalEngineering247.com.//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////Massive assemblies such as entire airplanes can be
modeled and viewed in mixed reality. Designers should
note that mixed reality displays data in context with
the environment. Displaying an entire airplane in a
small of ce space compromises the effectiveness of
the system. Interaction with large assemblies ideally
occurs in large viewing areas.DE_0819_Focus_Mixed_Reality_Kevan.indd 22 7/11/19 10:43 AM