Dassault Systemes: An Immersive Internet contender to watch

by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.

On June 17th-18th we attended Dassault Systemes’ DevCon 2008 conference and accompanying industry analyst event in Paris. Dassault Systemes (DS) has roots in computer-aided design (CAD) software and product lifecycle management (PLM) and is evolving into what the company is calling “PLM 2.0.” DS uses the term PLM 2.0 to refer to the concept of creating an online 3D environment that enables everyone -– not just engineers -– to create and share 3D product designs and models, and help bring new products to market. It’s the focus on “online 3D environment for everyone” that gets us excited and DS has a few products in its 3DVIA brand that mark the company’s move into the Immersive Internet market. Most significantly:

• An authoring environment for 3D modeling and game development. 3DVIA MP (a new, enterprise-scale version of the 3DVIA Virtools application development platform) is a tool for creating “lifelike experiences.” (For more on this see the ThinkBalm blog post “First life” versus “fake life” – When realism is important in the Immersive Internet.) Customers include companies like Electronic Arts, which uses it to prototype new video games. DS says this tool can be used to create what the company calls “smart objects” –- 3D models that are animated or scripted so they have some functionality. While 3DVIA MP’s roots are in video game production and creating design and market simulations in specific vertical markets, we foresee DS customers experimenting with the tool to create immersive learning simulations in the future. 
• Free, easy-to-use 3D modeling software. 3DVIA Shape is a basic modeling tool currently in beta (free software, client download required) that people can use to create fairly simple objects and forms. 3DVIA Shape provides an opportunity for people not familiar with 3D content creation to get their feet wet. The product competes with other entry level 3D content creation tools like tools like Altadyn 3DXplorer, the open source C3DL project, Google Sketchup, the modeling tools built into Linden Lab’s Second Life, the open source Ogoglio project, and View22 SceneCaster.
• An online community where people can share 3D content they create. Dassault Systemes’ answer to Flickr for photos or Google 3D Warehouse for 3D content is 3Dvia.com. 3DVIA.com currently has 28,000 members who have created and uploaded about 2,900 3D models that are free and available for public consumption, with thousands of other objects that members choose to keep private. 3DVIA.com supports uploading of 3D model files not only from 3DVIA software but other professional and open source modeling products including Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya, Google Sketchup, open source Blender, and others. Members who use3DVIA Shape can directly publish and in the future “remix” 3D models on 3DVIA.com with storage and sharing managed on the Internet.
• In the future: the ability to remix 3D creations. DS expects a future release of 3DVIA.com to provide members with the ability to remix (modify and reuse) other peoples’ 3D content using DS’s 3DVIA tools, while remaining in compliance with the original creator’s licensing requirements. People will be able to modify 3D objects by simply changing the dimensions or parameters of the object, or add animations or interactive functionality to originally static 3D objects to make them “smart objects.” This future capability has the potential to set DS apart from sites like Google 3D Warehouse. Imagine if DS added a means for monetization –- picture an iStockPhoto.com type site for 3D content that could be used in any virtual world or environment. This could really help propel the Immersive Internet forward.

Dassault Systemes does not offer a virtual world platform, per se -– customers have not used 3DVIA MP to create massively multiplayer online games or virtual worlds. But the company’s strengths in 3D modeling, CAD, and PLM combined with executives’ vision of an interactive, immersive 3D future show whopping potential. We’re going to be keeping a close eye on this one.

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

Heavy equipment manufacturer explores Immersive Internet for product prototyping

by Erica Driver.

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed two enterprise IT architects at a US-based heavy equipment manufacturer about steps the company is taking toward the Immersive Internet. The company is funding the IT architecture group to try to find more effective, less expensive ways to design and prototype products, which in this case are complex and expensive pieces of machinery. The company has been steadily on the move to compress its product cycles from about 9 years thirty years ago down to six years a few years ago, now down to about four years today –- and shorter than that in the future.

One of the company’s executives believes that how well the company collaborates internally and externally will be a differentiator in the future. The company is global, with engineers all around the world. The engineers use the PTC Pro/ENGINEER (Pro/E) computer-aided design (CAD) software to develop their products and anyone who wants to interact with product models in a collaborative manner has to have the expensive Pro/E application on the desktop.

Initially, the manufacturer worked with a local state university to create a rapid prototyping system that utilizes augmented reality and the university’s Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) (see figure for an example of a CAVE at the Univ. of Illinois at Chicago). In this environment, engineers and others could interact with each other and a 3D virtual prototype of a new product –- say, a tractor or backhoe or forklift. But the CAVE equipment is costly and to collaborate in this type of immersive environment all participants have to be on-site.

So now the manufacturer is working on porting the geometry of 3D product models from Pro/E into a virtual world built on Sun Microsystems’ Project Wonderland open source virtual world platform. They’ve gotten to the point where avatars can interact with, say, a virtual tractor in the environment –- fly around it, look inside it, fly into the engine. But they had to slim down the geometry and reduce the number of internal parts in the image, so users can’t at this time look at the internal wiring or other systems.

The IT architecture team is enthusiastic about the future and hopeful that the Immersive Internet will be able to deliver:

• Better engineering collaboration. The company hopes that engineers located in different parts of the world will be able to work together on a digital model of a product or part — interactively and simultaneously. Never mind better collaboration –- how about mass collaboration. It’s one thing for a handful of engineers to collaborate on a design or concept. But it’s another thing to be able to say “I’m working on a proof of concept with twenty of my customers.”
• New products that can be operated remotely. Imagine a factory fully decked out with radio-frequency identification (RFID) and global positioning systems (GPSs), where a forklift operator might be sitting not up in the forklift cab but behind a desk with a headset on, operating an unmanned vehicle remotely. Or operating several unmanned forklifts remotely at the same time. A powerful combination could be a 3D virtual environment with a real-life video feed from machines so the operator of the virtual machine can see what the real machine “sees.” Or think about a leader/follower scenario, where several tractors in a field might follow a lead tractor that someone is driving.
• Reduced manufacturing and operations costs. At this company, a typical factory has 20 million square feet of space. One of the difficulties in a space this big is the company sometimes loses parts. They have to fly parts in from other locations via air freight because people can’t find the pallet they need. A virtual environment, RFID tags and a GPS system, and streaming video could be combined to reduce or eliminate this problem.

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

“First life” versus “fake life”— When realism is important in the Immersive Internet

By Sam Driver with Erica Driver.

At Dassault Systemes’ (DS) DevCon 2008 conference and industry analyst event in Paris on June 17th-18th one of the key themes was “life-like” or “first life” (which was a bit of a friendly dig against Linden Lab’s Second Life®) experiences in virtual environments – these are terms DS executives use to refer to hyper-realistic interactive experiences. DS is taking the concept of realism in virtual environments to a whole new level – to the point, in fact, where digital representations of real-world objects can actually work in virtual environments!

 

During one of the keynote sessions at DevCon, Dassault Systemes senior VP and general manager Lynne Wilson showed a demo of a digital camera being used in a virtual environment to snap pictures within that environment. Here’s a snapshot of the camera, with a few instructions embedded, and you can play with the interactive demo yourself by following this link to DS’s 3DVIA.com site. (You will have to download and install a media player plug-in to be able to experience it.)  

It is not surprising that as DS develops new tools for creating virtual environments the company places a heavy emphasis on realism. After all, this is what DS as a computer-aided design (CAD) and product life-cycle management (PLM)vendor has been doing for many years – helping its customers create realistic digital models of products and parts. Realism is Dassault Systemes’ bailiwick. And it’s not surprising given the company’s background that DS executives today attach a greater value to virtual objects that could someday be manufactured in the physical world than to 3D objects that will never be more than digital or virtual. But as virtual environments become more common in the workplace, DS may find that its focus grows to include rich 3D digital models of products that are never intended to be manufactured into a physical product – their sole purpose is to function in virtual worlds, immersive learning simulations, etc.

Also, many virtual worlds today lack realism (not including mirror worlds like Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth). A typical experience in a virtual world today is much more like attending a haute couture runway show than hitting a suburban shopping mall. High fashion clothing is (in my view, anyway) pretty much non-functional, fits only a select (skinny) few, and is terribly impractical. It is measured on style, not utility. In contrast, clothes you can buy in most real-world shopping malls are not nearly as radical (luckily for my conservative dress style), generally hold together and stay put (luckily for anyone who may see me in public), and have a broader appeal to the average Joe. In virtual worlds you can find lots of stuff that looks incredibly cool but is no more functional than wallpaper.

All this talk about “first life” and life-like experiences in virtual environments really got me thinking. Life-like virtual environments have their place, to be sure, but are not inherently superior to less realistic virtual environments. My recommendations:

• Focus on realism when . . .  You work for a product company or retailer and want to get customer input and feedback before you ever build the first physical prototype. Or you want to create and use or sell virtual items for use in virtual worlds, immersive workspaces, and serious games — items that increase users’ sense of immersion in the environment through a high degree of realism. Or you want to use highly realistic 3D digital models in interactive advertising – for example, to allow customers to race a model of your new hybrid vehicle against your competitor’s digital model of its hybrid in a virtual world or video game.
• Realism is not so necessary when . . .Making a virtual environment or object realistic means you’re not taking advantage of the qualities of virtual worlds, where anything is possible. Why walk down virtual city streets or drive in a virtual car to go shopping in a virtual mall, when you can just teleport there? Why replicate in a virtual world product or environmental qualities that came to be not because of good design or ergonomics but because it was the cheapest way to go? You don’t want the Immersive Internet equivalent of using workflow technology to automate a poorly designed business process. Another reason to focus less on realism is when you are creating a virtual environment that is focused on the social aspects of virtual worlds – such as enabling people to find each other and engage with each other, or express themselves through the appearance of their avatars.

The bottom line: don’t stick to common perceptions of reality just because it’s what you know or it’s easier or you’re afraid of what people might think. The Immersive Internet lets us actually improve on reality in some ways. (Hey, who hasn’t dreamed of flying  . . . in a virtual world, you can!)

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.