
Ford's designers are learning to create 3D cars in VR - mstats
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/ford-virtual-reality-design-gravity-sketch/
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aetherspawn
They obviously showed a lot of meticulously mated actual 3D components but
those were all prepared in a CAD program.

Sure, the VR sketch might be useful, but the visual part of the video is quite
a lot of marketing spin when it’s not showing the abstract lines.

And I’m not sure that VR is the best way to “feel” a car in this way either. A
car is an extension of your body, so it’s just as important where/what your
shoulders, knees and legs are/feel as to what the eyes can see.

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aphextron
Basically any usage of VR outside of gaming right now is guaranteed to just be
marketing nonsense. The hardware simply isn’t there for real world
professional usage as a productivity enhancing device. Some day we’ll be
there, but the current state of even the most advanced HMDs is little beyond
toy prototypes at this point.

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vjeux
Lots of people are doing some really cool art using VR headsets. Those two
Facebook groups are really nice to join if you’re interested.

Animations:
[https://www.facebook.com/groups/virtual.animation/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/virtual.animation/)

Paintings:
[https://www.facebook.com/groups/virtual.paintings/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/virtual.paintings/)

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aphextron
I should have included art as well. There's definitely a lot of cool visual
stuff being done. But the ergonomics just aren't there yet for the use cases
constantly being touted in the media like virtual desktops and CAD modeling.

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kettlecorn
I’m working on something similar (not announced yet).

Tools like Gravity Sketch, and the tool I’m making, are great for
conceptualization and communication.

In seconds to minutes you can take an idea from your head and show it to
someone else. You can have an idea for a product ready to show your peers and
in moments they can offer feedback and make changes.

Tools like this aren’t replacing the final engineering yet, but they’re making
the planning and communication stage dramatically more efficient.

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storrgie
we're using VR for some progressive design stuff, do you have a contact you
can provide. It might be that we're a good opportunity to test out something
as it nears announcement.

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kettlecorn
Sounds interesting. And I'd love to have more eyes on the product closer to
release!

Reach out to me at my personal email: ian.kettlewell@gmail.com

That goes for anyone else reading this as well. If anyone is working in this
space or wants to chat about VR design tools I am interested in talking to
you.

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syntaxing
I design mechanical stuff for a living and I can't imagine that designing cars
in VR is more efficient than CAD. There isn't any barrier right now from idea
to CAD. If an engineer (or a scientist) can imagine it, an engineer will be
able to design and create it digitally with current technology. I would say
the current limitation is the manufacturing tools rather than the designing
tools.

Side note, I think the work process for designing the exterior of cars is to
create a sculptures with clay, transfer to clay to CAD, and rinse and repeat.
I wonder if VR will ever beat manual sculpting.

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d-sc
Also design mechanical stuff for a living. I’ve spent multiple days over the
course of the past six months creating drawings to demonstrate how a design
will ‘feel’ once made. A 1:1 3d model that other stakeholders could walk into
would be so much more effective.

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Scene_Cast2
As a hobbyist - the CAD tools I've used (Fusion360 and Inventor) - are clunky
with arbitrary 3D shapes (e.g. a Porsche door panel). How do people in the
"real world" do it? Iterate in Maya / similar and then export? Think in
parametric curves? Something else entirely?

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liquids
An industrial designer would sketch the outline then the images would be
brought into parametric CAD software as references. The 2D image can be built
into 2D/3D lines, then these curves are used to create surfaces which finally
are stitched together. The nature of complex surfaces interacting and joining
seamlessly is where the difficulty lies. "A class" surfacing is an entire
speciality and can take a career to master.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_A_surface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_A_surface)

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benj111
I'm having trouble with the title.

Wouldn't the title be equally as correct written as "create VR cars in 3D", or
even just "create cars in VR".

And that's before mentioning that 'create' is ambiguous. Build or design???

Could someone convince me on the use case? I get that designing a car in 20
hours is 'better' than in 20 weeks. But with all the 1000s of hours put into
other considerations, is this going to make any appreciable difference to
anything?

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wuliwong
My takeaway was that the designs might be different not just the same but done
more quickly in VR. They stressed the point that in VR the designer can place
themselves in the car and design at a "human scale." "We can get ourselves
into the mind and the body, the virtual body, of our customer."

As far as the title, I think just dropping the "3D" might make it better?

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abhinai
This is beautiful because I think this is just the beginning. Who knows if
we'll still be designing cars in VR in the long run. But it is really nice
that people are beginning to experiment and tools to help them do so are
emerging.

As Paul Graham says, all good ideas have an "ugly duckling" phase.

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wuliwong
Yes, I was thinking that many people thought that designing cars with a
computer was silly in the early days of 3-D computer aided design. It seems
the jump from creating tactile prototypes to designing on a computer is a much
larger jump than moving from a flat computer screen to a VR HMD. I'm surprised
there is such a negative response so far on HN.

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dwighttk
Were they making 2D cars before?

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lostgame
My first thought exactly. Perhaps ‘3D models of cars in VR’ would’ve been a
more solid title.

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Causality1
So what? The industry is far too conservative to bring any sort of radical
design to mass market. This may as well be "Ford designers are learning to use
A1 paper instead of letter sized"

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lostgame
>> So what? The industry is far too conservative to bring any sort of radical
design to mass market.

I don’t think we _need_ a radically new design for cars? ‘The Homer’ comes to
mind. >.>

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2dollars27cents
Cool. I'm more of a mechanical designer so it is hard for me to understand why
this is an improvement because I'm used to requiring a lot of precision in my
modeling. That said when he mentioned the ability to get line-of-sight on
different curves I could appreciate it a bit more.

I still don't think that the hand controllers they're using are the best input
device. I can imagine a hybrid approach where design teams are using standard
surface modeling like Alias/3Ds Max/Blender for the bulk of the design work
and then VR systems like this for review.

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pontifier
I'm surprised there isn't actual CAD software for VR yet.

When I tried tiltbrush for the first time I was immediately struck by how easy
it was to create some things, but how much of a pain it was to modify things,
or make things like parallel lines or surfaces.

Maybe everyone is waiting for someone else to do it. Even the linked software
(gravity sketch) seems to be missing constraints, dimensions, and snaps,
though it has control points so modification of existing geometry is at least
possible.

What gives?

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acct1771
Why bother just yet, when the most important part/killer feature will be
subpar (for now) - reviewing the models in high res 3D.

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dvt
When I was at Edmunds.com, I worked on a few "greenfield" projects, including
VR. I'm generally bearish on VR, but I think if there's a space where VR can
truly usher in a paradigm shift, it's auto -- both for design/development, as
well as showcasing (think potential buyers, auto shows, etc.).

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benj111
"for design/development"

Could you expand?

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nraynaud
funny, I was thinking that CastAR (now Tilt Five) would be a good compromise
for that. Having your CAD display in front of you of you, the reflecting mat
on the side and no too intrusive glasses. So that you just have to turn your
head to see the 3D. You don't really need virtual reality when you're just
working on an object, you just need a bit of 3D to help you grasp the shapes.

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germinalphrase
Maybe they could use all that expertise to design a smaller truck.

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DougN7
What is a “3D” car? Seems needlessly redundant.

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xellisx
Too bad their engineers are not learning how to make cars that don't need
several recalls.

