This May, the Automotive Innovation Forum witnessed multiple attendees collaborating in the same immersive environment through a distinct augmented and mixed demo.
With NVIDIA CloudXR, forum attendees engaged in an exciting experience of viewing the Mission R, the latest electric car project from Porsche, before it was manufactured, in extended reality.
Photorealism With Digital Twins and XR
In propelling the innovation for a sustainable driving experience, motorsport brand Porsche launched the Mission R concept, an electric-powered car engineered to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. An exciting demo of the car’s specs and design was brought forth by an augmented and mixed reality experience with NVIDIA, Autodesk, Lenovo, and Varjo.
Forum attendees had the opportunity to see a life-size digital twin of the Mission R. The digital twin bears an exact resemblance to the physical model’s build, paint job, and tire design.
Digital twin technology makes an excellent use case for automakers, as it allows a true-to-reality simulation of physics and materials, before adopting them onto the physical model.
As with Porsche, the digital twin served as an astounding preview for attendees to engage with. Extended reality and interactive illumination blended the virtual Mission R well with the physical environment. NVIDIA CloudXR, advanced headsets, and tablets compatible with XR technology gave the viewers a glimpse at the digital twin.
Immersive Streaming With NVIDIA CloudXR
NVIDIA Cloud XR powered the streaming experience for the Mission R showcase. With the low-latency private 5G network, XR streaming enabled the audience to experience the virtual Mission R model.
NVIDIA CloudXR is the architecture supporting streaming services for extended reality content. The XR experience was streamed through next-generation workstations and XR-ready graphic card processors such as the NVIDIA A40 GPU.
Porsche Mission R Augmented and Mixed Reality
Demo
AR/VR technology is quickly evolving by the minute. VR headsets, advanced 3D product design, and more allow viewers to engage in immersive experiences across different devices.
In the racecar showcase, NVIDIA streamed the experience through a private application server, Project Aurora. Project Aurora is a deployment platform to optimize streaming of content from XR applications.
Users had two options for viewing the demo, shown through an Autodesk VRED collaborative session. The augmented reality experience was streamed with NVIDIA CloudXR from the Project Aurora server, powered by NVIDIA A40 GPUs, to Lenovo Android tablets.
For the mixed reality experience, attendees used Varjo XR-3 headsets tethered to NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPUs running on a Lenovo ThinkStation P620 workstation.
During the showcase, five attendees, represented as avatars in the session, were able to be in the same experience at the same time. Two participants could use XR headsets for a mixed reality viewing experience of the virtual Porsche, while three tablets catered for a handheld AR experience.
Optimized Technology for the Ideal XR Experience
Headsets and tablets are important, but the right computing architecture is pivotal to the smooth sailing of XR streaming. The NVIDIA CloudXR integrates with the NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstation for an optimized virtual environment and high-fidelity graphics.
A Lenovo SR670 server supported the overall workload of NVIDIA GPUs. Specifically built to enhance AI performance, this server, together with the Project Aurora platform, enabled a fully immersive and real-time augmented and mixed reality experience with the virtual Porsche.
Extended Reality and Growing Opportunities With Project Aurora
NVIDIA’s Project Aurora is an established platform with the purpose of simplifying the adoption of extended reality projects across devices and varying points of location.
With Project Aurora, designers can engage in operations from any location and operate the virtual environment. Project Aurora supports a range of graphics tasks outside of AR/VR, making it a versatile deployment platform.