Immersive virtual reality for the naval sector in Galicia

The world's first virtual reality center focused on the naval sector equips its immersive cave with four Christie Mirage series projectors. The star room of the new Interactive Digital Center is a cave with three active walls and floor, equipped with four projectors that allow the user to feel totally immersed in the stereoscopic simulation.

The Center for Innovation and Services of Galicia (CIS Galicia) has created in Ferrol (Galicia) the world's first virtual reality center focused on naval sector technologies. The center is called IDC Galicia (Interactive Digital Center) and includes an immersive cave equipped with four Christie Mirage S+3K stereoscopic projectors. The IDC Galicia, which has a surface of 180 square meters, It was created by the Xunta de Galicia, with an investment of 1,3 million euros, for the development of R&D&I technologies applied to the naval industry. And Galicia is today a world reference in shipbuilding.. The center is dedicated to developing virtual reality applications, augmented virtual reality, stereoscopy and hardware-software integration. It is made up of a group of eight professionals whose profiles cover all the disciplines required to generate this type of applications., from 3D design and modeling, going through texturing, the programming of simulations and the design and integration of physical systems that allow the end user to feel immersed and interact with the virtual environment. The IDC star room is a cave with three active walls and floor, equipped with the four Christie Mirage, allowing the user to feel totally immersed in the simulation. “The observer has four walls around him (frontal, sides, and soil) with dimensions of 3×3 meters that offer you an authentic feeling of realism, and that he can touch objects, since these seem to be next to him in the center of the room”, explains José Luis de Nicolás Sánchez, head of the Design and Virtual Simulation Unit at IDC Galicia. Using stereoscopic glasses, you get high-quality viewing with a dramatic sense of reality.. So, projects can be reviewed, study and show content, look for innovative solutions… all this within a scale representation 1:1 of the model, which greatly facilitates engineering work. “The system allows you to observe the 3D environment in real size and get an exact idea of ​​the dimensions of the model, of the sensations that it will transmit in reality or of the ergonomics of a system”, says José Luis de Nicolás Sánchez. Cuatro Christie Mirage S+3K The four Christie Mirage S+3K (3 chips DLP, 3.000 lumens, SXGA+ native resolution) were supplied and installed by Ingevideo, Christie partner in Spain, which was the winner of the public tender called by the Xunta de Galicia to equip the center. “It is a leading facility in Spain, perhaps the best virtual reality facility in the country, “in which the most advanced immersive virtual reality systems on the market are integrated”, says Miguel Ángel Piqueras, gerente de Ingevideo. Each of the four Christie projectors is connected to an HP XV8000 workstation – featuring the latest Nvidia Quadro FX5800 technology –, from where the images that are projected on the four walls are launched. The virtual reality software used is from EON Reality, although other tools such as OpenSceneGraph and OGRE 3D are also used. The 3D glasses are from the Nuvision brand. Virtual reality helmets and gloves are also used that allow total immersion in the scene and interaction with its elements in a much more realistic way.. The aspect ratio is 4:3. Plus the immersive cave, IDC Galicia has a development room and a training room with high-performance software and hardware equipment especially focused on virtual reality work.. Companies and research groups can access this equipment through an agreement with the IDC Galicia. With them you can develop commercial tasks, technical reviews of projects or visualization of complex data, inter alia. Among the projects the IDC is currently working on is a virtual navigation and maneuver simulator for skipper training., a complex system of occupational risk prevention simulators in the naval sector, virtual reality and augmented reality content for mobile phones, and virtual content to disseminate the Camino de Santiago. "Although at first the center was very focused on the naval sector, Currently we offer our services to all types of Galician companies”, José Luis de Nicolás Sánchez clarifies. The IDC Galicia also carries out various activities to disseminate the technologies with which it usually works.. Among them, we can highlight the performance of training tasks on modeling and texturing techniques or on the generation of virtual reality applications., as well as holding informative sessions and publishing manuals. Immersive cave The main challenge of the installation was the setup of the immersive cave: “It is a very complex system to adjust because you have to square the images on the different walls to the millimeter., the mirrors in between, the positions of the projectors…”, says Miguel Ángel Piqueras. “In the end everything was perfectly adjusted and the system works with extraordinary precision”, add. José Luis de Nicolás Sánchez has been impressed with the final result: “The feeling that people who use the cave get is really shocking.. The visual quality is excellent and the performance of the projectors has been impeccable so far, “We haven’t had a single problem.”. Miguel Angel Piqueras, the Ingevideo, stability stands out above all, reliability, and price-performance ratio of projectors. “Christie Mirage delivers clean images with perfect color saturation.”, and they are a guarantee when starting a 3D project”, concludes.