Siemens, Sony Deliver Breakthrough Immersive Engineering for the Industrial Metaverse

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Siemens Digital Industries Software, in collaboration with Sony Corporation, announced today that it is delivering on its next-generation immersive engineering roadmap that brings together Siemens’ NX software for product engineering with Sony’s breakthrough head-mounted display (HMD) to enable the industrial metaverse.

The XR HMD (SRH-S1) features Sony’s high-definition 1.3-type OLED Microdisplays with 4K resolution, and its proprietary rendering technology enables real-time, high-definition and realistic rendering of 3D objects. It also has a pair of controllers optimized for intuitive interaction with 3D objects and precise pointing. The head-mounted display is also optimized for extended creative use, designed with comfort and stability in mind.

“We embarked on this collaborative project with Sony to deliver the power of the industrial metaverse to our community of designers, engineers and manufacturers directly in our flagship product engineering software,” said Bob Haubrock, senior vice president, Product Engineering Software, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “After previewing the HMD at CES last year, our collective teams have built a set of tools that revolutionize how mixed reality is used in the engineering space - to not only support global collaboration based on high-fidelity 3D models, but to enable co-creation directly on vital 3D CAD data in a managed, secure environment. Today, we are making this next generation set of technologies available to our customers.”

“Since announcing our collaboration with Siemens at CES 2024, we’ve had opportunities to get direct feedback from Siemens’ customers about the technology, and as Siemens’ NX users ourselves, we were excited that many of them share our enthusiasm for the potential of Immersive Engineering,” said Seiya Amatatsu, Incubation Center, XR Technology Development Division, Sony Corporation.

“Siemens’ Immersive Engineering technology helps our designers and engineers see, design and edit parts more easily with the unique controllers, enable our customers to experience their car at human-scale before it is built and help stakeholders from production easily collaborate with designers and engineers to validate parts before manufacturing,” said Ian Briggs, Founder and Head of Design, Briggs Automotive Company (BAC).

Siemens’ Immersive Engineering toolset brings the power of mixed reality to the product engineering and manufacturing community, enabling high-fidelity mixed reality and 3D-focused collaboration. Siemens’ Immersive Engineering solutions include:

NX™ Immersive Explorer: A headset-agnostic solution that designers and engineers use to conduct informal design reviews and collaborate using 3D CAD data derived from Siemens’ NX software for product engineering.

NX™ Immersive Designer: Designed from the ground up to take advantage of the capabilities of Sony’s HMD and creative controllers, NX Immersive Designer enables designers and engineers to interact, manipulate and collaborate around graphically rich 3D product models natively in NX, without the need for additional preparation or software. Using Sony’s Ring and Pointer controllers for object interaction and precise 3D geometry manipulation, designers and engineers can interact directly with product prototypes, NX commands and menus.

NX Immersive Designer supports augmented, mixed reality environments to place virtual objects in the real world, conduct design sessions in a high-fidelity virtual design review space and/or through large scale, high-resolution virtual monitors to extend and supplement the virtual design session. For even more efficient interaction, users can take advantage of NX Voice Command Assistant in the immersive environment to navigate multiple levels of menus and clicks with simple, easy-to-use spoken keywords.

NX Immersive Collaborator allows organizations of all sizes to take advantage of both co-located and remote design review with multiple participants.

NX Immersive Collaborator: NX Immersive Collaborator builds on the capabilities of NX Immersive Explorer and Designer to allow organizations of all sizes to take advantage of both co-located and remote design review with multiple participants. NX Immersive Collaborator requires Siemens’ cloud-enabled NX X to host design collaboration and review sessions – participants can join using local VR or desktop view for broad collaboration options. Value-based licensing tokens are used for only hosting sessions, with participants able to join remotely for free.

Availability

NX Immersive Designer is available for all NX customers with the latest updates and through Siemens’ value-based licensing. NX Immersive Collaborator will be available later this month with the NX X update and also through value-based licensing. The NX Immersive Engineering tools have been developed to exclusively work with Sony’s HMD offering that include 4K OLED Microdisplays and dedicated controllers. The HMD with the controllers is needed for both NX Immersive Designer and Collaborator and is priced at $4,750 and available for preorder now, with shipping expected to begin in February 2025.