Through the Interface

VR guinea pigs

On Friday we had our first external visitors to the VR room at Autodesk Neuchatel. Jose and Erich came across from Amstein + Walthert, an engineering firm headquartered in Zurich. Jose had reached out to me – we’ve been in contact a few times, over the years – as he’d read about the VR room on this blog and was curious to try it out. The room still isn’t 100% ready – we’re waiting for some furniture to show up – but it seemed a good opportunity to try out some of our VR demos on live volunteers. Here’s... Read more →

An update on Autodesk’s VR activities

I received an email from a development partner yesterday checking in on Autodesk’s VR offerings. It occurred to me that while I’ve spoken about them at the DevDays in the US and Europe, I haven’t posted anything here. So here’s some fairly up-do-date information on what technologies Autodesk has in the VR space. The way I’ve been tending to classify VR offerings in general is around the “distance from the metal”: i.e. how much (relatively speaking) of the software stack does the executing code need to go through to get down to the display hardware. This is a somewhat... Read more →

Autodesk LIVE in the Vive

I’ve finally found the time to get one of the new Demons bound to my service installed with Autodesk VRED, Revit and LIVE. I had some teething issues getting the HTC Vive to work: my rookie mistake was thinking I could connect it to a DisplayPort via a basic DP –> HDMI dongle. This was enough for the PC – and Steam VR – to detect it, but not enough for anything to show inside the HMD. After a phone consult with Merten Stroetzel, I fixed it by having it come off the DVI port (another option would be... Read more →

Autodesk LIVE now supports VR

I’ve been waiting for this piece of news for months: Autodesk LIVE – the “one-click” publishing workflow from Revit to high-quality, interactive 3D visualization courtesy of Stingray – now supports VR via the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift via a public beta. Admittedly it’s more like two (or even three!) clicks, but the clicking does seem altogether painless. Here’s a video showing what’s what: This is great timing, as I’ve just heard that my Demons are at the doorstep (well, Zurich airport). I’ll for sure be kicking the tyres on this workflow over the coming weeks. If you’re curious... Read more →

Reducing the pain of VR content generation: Autodesk LIVE

Some of you may have heard about the launch of a new Autodesk product, last week, that’s focused on generating interactive 3D environments from Revit models. It’s called Autodesk LIVE and is part of the Autodesk LIVE Design umbrella (at least I think I have that the right way around). Autodesk LIVE Design is all about making it easier to apply best-in-class visualization technology from our Media & Entertainment division – who collectively know a few things about high-end rendering and animation, admittedly – to the world of design and engineering. Here’s a video describing how Autodesk LIVE –... Read more →