NVIDIA teases the Holodeck design lab

Posted on Tuesday, October 10 2017 @ 14:56 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
At the GTC Europe in Munich, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang teased the early access program for the NVIDIA Holodeck. This is a virtual reality tool for design teams, it enables them to remotely collaborate on new ideas and products, while minimizing the need for physical prototyping.

NVIDIA Holodeck
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today announced it has opened early access to NVIDIA® Holodeck™, its intelligent virtual reality platform, for select designers and developers.

NVIDIA Holodeck brings designers, developers and their customers together from anywhere in the world to discover, build and explore creations in a highly realistic, collaborative and physically simulated VR environment.

The platform's immersive, photoreal experience drives creativity, provides a faster and more accurate understanding of a scene or model, streamlines the review process and reduces the need for physical prototyping. Because of its realistic graphics, accurate real-world physics and multi-user collaboration, Holodeck is already used as a powerful design lab for AI agents trained with the NVIDIA Isaac simulator.

Product designers, application developers, architects and other 3D content creators who access NVIDIA Holodeck can:

  • Render large and highly detailed models photorealistically, in real time, at life-like scale. Designers can save significant time focusing on their designs instead of simplifying complex models to achieve a smooth experience in VR.
  • Create and interact with people, robots and objects in a physically simulated environment. By understanding how a project looks, feels, sounds and behaves in different environments before deploying them in the real world, designers can create superior, safer products.
  • Collaborate naturally and in real time in the same virtual space. Even globally dispersed teams can explore and review the same model together to bring better products to market, faster.
  • Enhance workflows with AI-powered simulation tools. Intelligent machines can be deployed and trained in Holodeck's realistic simulated environments. Intelligence can then be transferred between the virtual and real worlds, so machines can be deployed more safely, quickly and cost-effectively.

    Forthcoming updates to Holodeck will address the growing demand for the deployment of deep learning techniques in virtual environments and include capabilities for AI-based training, simulation, content creation and the discovery of new ideas.

    "NVIDIA Holodeck empowers designers to bring peers, partners and customers along the design journey to explore intricate, life-like 3D worlds together and ensure that the best ideas are discovered," said Bob Pette, vice president of Professional Visualization at NVIDIA. "It's an unparalleled environment for deploying and testing AI-based agents -- and will only get better as we add more AI capabilities."

    Industry Support for NVIDIA Holodeck
    "Virtual reality is one of the leading opportunities for design," said Hao Ko, principal architect at Gensler. "This technology, such as NVIDIA Holodeck, allows architects to explore their designs in photorealistic fidelity and at life-like scale. Being able to 'walk the halls' of a building that is yet to be built brings new understanding to the design choices."

    "At KPF we use VR to enable real-world and model scale immersion of our designs," said Cobus Bothma, senior associate principal and applied research director at KPF. "NVIDIA Holodeck is going to enable us to deliver on this potential, with amazingly accurate visuals and physics. And, it will allow us to collaborate with designers in our worldwide offices, our partners and our clients, in real time. That's a powerful game changer for our industry."

    "During our design process, teams of our engineers and scientists work together to imagine an idea, plan a design, create that model, experiment and test that solution, then take time to reiterate and improve the original -- all steps that are crucial to mission success at NASA," said Frank Delgado, lead for NASA's Hybrid Reality Lab. "With Holodeck, we will be able to clearly visualize our models, easily collaborate in a physically simulated environment, and review to ensure the efficiency and safety of our designs."

    Availability
    NVIDIA Holodeck early access is the first opportunity for a select group of designers, developers and inventors to experiment with its capabilities and guide future development. Applications for Holodeck early access are being accepted now.


  • About the Author

    Thomas De Maesschalck

    Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



    Loading Comments