Through the Virtual Looking Glass in Dearborn: Ford's Interior Design VR Lab

Start the video, then click on the 3D button in the menu bar to select 3D or 2D format. You can also select resolution up to 1080p HD. Video courtesy of Ford Motor Company and Cars In Depth, where you can also find 3D images of Ford’s VR lab.

With a big push from the film, computer, video game, camera, and television set industries, 3D seems poised to become rather commonplace, particularly when passive display panels requiring no special eyeglasses will soon be at consumer level price points in just a year or so, I’d say. Some of the most sophisticated 3D technology in use today, though, is not in use in Hollywood, California, or Redmond, Washington, it’s in places called Dearborn, Auburn Hills and Warren, Michigan. The domestic automakers were early adopters of advanced computer aided design and manufacturing (CADCAM) as well as advanced computer imagery. They have some of the the most advanced tools available today and some of the most skilled and creative engineers and designers who develop and use those tools. Virtual reality is one of those tools. By projecting a realistic holographic or stereo display, stylists and exterior designers can get an accurate perspective on how their ideas will look without having to make time consuming and expensive scale and full size models. I think it’s pretty understandable that car companies would use 3D and VR for exterior design studies. Perhaps even more valuable to automakers, though, is how stereo image technology can be used in the interior design and engineering of modern cars.

I had the chance to learn a little about that value when I visited Ford Motor Company’s Product Development Center in Dearborn and spoke with Elizabeth Baron, who is in charge of Ford’s interior virtual reality lab. Dr. Baron is one of the world’s experts on VR and stereo imagery. I earlier alluded to the motion picture industry. Dr. Baron’s expertise is such that Ford doesn’t ask Hollywood for advice, it’s the other way around. Working not far from her childhood home in Dearbron, Dr. Baron sometimes flies out to Los Angeles to consult for filmmakers. While Ford does use software from outside vendors Dr. Baron and her team have customized it for their purposes. Though they have three different setups that I saw, a simple chair and steering wheel, a more elaborate interior mock up where they can try out actual physical representations like doors, cubby holes and arm rests, and a CAVE immersive automatice virtual environment made by Mechdyne, all of them share a basic technology of tracking head motions and changing the imagery in real time in response to those head motions. That way when you look at the rear view mirror, try to adjust a knob, or turn around to virtually flail with your virtual hands at your virtual but not virtuous children misbehaving in the back seat, your perceived view changes according to what you are looking at. The virtual rear view and side mirrors, by the way, can also display what you would normally see in your rear view mirror, in real time, and also respond to head motions.

As you might expect from all this happening in real time, with uncompressed video, there is some serious heavy lifting going on in terms of computing power. When I tried out their most basic setup, they had the rear view mirrors shut off because Dr. Baron said that it was running on their older computer which isn’t as fast. So we’re not exactly talking about a notebook computer playing a bootleg copy of Avatar here. The virtual cars are built up from Ford’s actual engineering and design computer files and the modeling is so accurate that when the mirrors are shut off, you can “see” the mirror assemblies’ internal components. To give you a comparison and an idea of the weight they are punching at in the digital realm, when I shoot 720p high definition video for Cars In Depth, about 90 seconds of left or right raw video in MOV format is about 110mb, before any further compression, about normal for a pocket camcorder. The raw 1080p AVI file of a F-150 interior that Ford supplied me is more the 320mb for just over 33 seconds of animation for just one eye. That’s about 10 times the data being generated per second of video.

In the Ford VR lab’s basic setup there’s a chair and a steering wheel set up inside about a 10 foot by 10 foot by 10 foot framework. Up on the frame are motion tracking cameras that respond to reference markers on the virtual reality helmet you wear. Stereo video is created by projecting a different image to each eye. The image is realistic enough that you can give yourself motion sickness if you move quickly enough – your brain gets confused between the motion it sees but doesn’t feel from the inner ear. Dr. Baron said that about 5% of people are sensitive to that phenomenon.

The same framework and motion tracking system, along with the same 3D projection technology is used in the second setup, which is closer to a mock up of real interior. Rapid prototype parts, like the console with cup holders that was in the rig when I tried it, can be installed per the simulation being projected.

Those two VR setups use images projected directly at your two eyes. I’ve processed the raw animation that Ford supplied me into a format suitable for YouTube’s 3D player, which is compatible with most forms of 3D viewing people have on their computers as well as 2D viewing. It’s cross posted over at Cars In Depth, where you can find other stereo photos and videos as well as some pretty cool content.

Ford’s third system is a Mechdyne CAVE. Unlike the other two systems that use visor to project different images on each eye, the CAVE uses 3D animation projected with polarized light on the interior wall of a large box, and you wear polarized eye glasses. The glasses are also mounted with motion tracking markers and the projected image changes according to head motion.

In all three of the setups, you don’t just see the interior of the car, you see a stereoscopic virtual world outside the car whose view and perspective reacts to your actions and movements. Unlike more common 3D imagery, where it’s a genuine stereo image but all on the other side of the screen, it’s a truly immersive experience, with objects in full stereo from close to the bridge of your nose out to the horizon. If the virtual hands are activated, when you reach over your shoulder to put on the safety harness, that’s exactly what you see. Your virtual hands grab a steering wheel that comes out at you from the instrument panel. Dr. Baron explained a little bit about 3D imagery, frustums and zero points, and how to calibrate the perspective in order to get things to pop out of the screen at you, but as I said, she’s one of the world’s experts on the subject, and while I know a little more about 3D than the average person, compared to her I’m a complete noob.

I got the chance to drive in a virtual Focus, a new virtual Explorer and a virtual F-150 (insert joke about all that virtue). I could try to describe how many ways they use the systems, but that would be fruitless as Dr. Baron told me that the engineers and designers come up with new ideas on how to use VR “almost every day”. In addition to trying out design and ergonomics, the lab also does what could accurately be described as behavioral studies. Not only do the systems track your head motion in order to alter the stereo imagery, the software tracks the tracking so to speak. All the head motions are recorded so engineers can learn how people look at their cars and the world from behind the wheel.

The technology is visually impressive. I’m sure that Dr. Baron and her team have heard everything in the thesaurus related to “wow”, “cool”, “amazing” and “I wonder if the wife will let me buy one”. Ford thinks that it provides enough of a competitive edge that Dr. Baron asked me to not identify their software vendors. She also asked me not to photograph some of the rapid prototype parts set up in the mock up. Remember, advanced design is something car companies usually keep close to their chests. Actually, I asked for access to the exterior design VR lab at Ford and that was shot down immediately. I’m still going to try. Head of Chrysler styling and Dodge brand manager Ralph Gilles told me that it’s possible that they could set up a generic car model for me to see in their exterior design VR lab, and if I do get a chance to see Chrysler’s or any other automaker’s use of 3D in exterior styling and design, I’ll report back.

For more details, check out the video below from G4TV. The guy’s a chucklehead, but the video will fill in some gaps that I may have missed.

Video Game – E3 2011 – Rides Whips & Hoons

Here is some more video on how Ford uses the digital domain to simulate reality for their design and engineering teams.

The videos were produced by Geek News Central of a media tour in their Product Development Center last year, with a special emphasis on virtual reality and designing in the digital domain. One note, Geek News Central seems to think that the entire interior VR lab is the CAVE, while the CAVE is just one of the tools they use there. Also, notice how in parts two and three the designers emphasize the importance of how light plays on real surfaces so their digital tools must give a realistic simulation of that effect. That’s one the things that’s very noticeable in our 3D videos from the auto shows. You can really see how reflected light is contoured by the cars’ shapes as it sweeps across shapes.

Disclaimer: The author publishes Cars In Depth, the first auto enthusiast site to feature 3D photos and videos. As such he has a vested interest in hyping 3D. In his defense, the author would like to point out that there’s a reason why designers and engineers today use virtual reality and why Harley Earl used clay models, and why Andrew F. Johnson ( cf. under biographies) brought three dimensional drawing from the ship and carriage building industries to automotive body design. Things look differently in three dimensions.