Glenn Nixon, Business Developer for VR for Barco, discusses Barco’s immersive VR cave, and how it fosters collaboration. The following is a transcript of our interview with him.
3E: Can you tell us about yourself and the company you’re here to represent?
GN: I’m Glenn Nixon, I’m the business development manager for virtual reality for Barco, and we’re here with our workstation partners Silverdraft Supercomputing and VR Cluster software.
3E: What makes Barco unique?
GN: What we’re showing here is an example of [a] projection-based, virtual reality solution. We’re using projectors – two rear projection side-screens and a front-projection floor screen – delivering the signals – active, stereo signals – and then when you get into the virtual environment, you have these glasses, 3D glasses, that are synchronized to the projectors, so that when you enter the environment you have a 3D view. Your right eye gets the right eye signal, left eye, left eye signal. The important thing about this type of technology is that, [with] these glasses, you can see through them, so if you’re in the cave, in the environment with another person, and you’re doing something, like a design review or something like that, I see you, you see me, we can see the content together. If I point out something, you can see what I’m pointing to. With three projectors, we’re showing about [how] to get into a product and look at very fine detail, and it’s a much more comfortable and much more collaborative environment compared to an HMD or head-mounted device, where you put that device on, and you’re kind of isolated.
3E: What have you seen at VRX that excites you and why?
GN: We’ve had a tremendous amount of interest. Typically, we have people lined up to experience the cave. It’s been very good for us. We’ve had a very good mix of different kinds of people from different markets. A lot of good reactions from people in the construction market, some automotive. So, it’s been a very good show for us. I think as people continue to experience and look at different application areas and different use cases, that is really raising the bar across the board on the kind of things people expect in terms of how real the experiences, and have it be very comfortable and collaborative. The trend is very much in the direction of many more use cases and a lot more value to end-users.
