Dec 18, 2014 -- Virtalis, one of the world’s leading Virtual Reality companies, is now shipping the first new version of its Visionary Render software since it was launched last year.  Visionary Render software allows users to access and experience a real-time, interactive and immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environment created from huge 3D datasets.  Users can work alone, in small groups, or collaborate with distant colleagues in a common virtual environment to perform detailed design reviews, rehearse in-depth training tasks, validate maintenance procedures or verify assembly and manufacturing processes.

Technical Director, Andrew Connell, said: “I am exceptionally proud of what the Virtalis R&D Team have managed to pack into Version 1.1.  From floating licences to capped sectioning, Version 1.1 represents an enormous advance in 3D rendering technology.  In further developing our ground-breaking VR software, Virtalis is grateful to its beta testers: Raytheon, AMRC, Vestas, Rolls-Royce and BAE.”

Headline Advances:

Rendering

• New controls for Scene Management: Automatic Level of Detail (LOD) enables efficient strategies for managing very large models. Overlapped Culling allows rendering to be shared across multiple CPUs. Advanced Instance Rendering Controls further offloads rendering tasks to the Graphics Card, allowing CPU and GPU to operate in parallel.

• Deferred Render: Gives more control over the appearance of the data, enabling many light effects, such as ambient occlusion, light from many light sources and shader post processing.

• Infinite Streaming Terrain: Support for terabyte terrain databases allows models to be put in geo-specific locations to give them accurate context.
• Logarithmic Z Support: Z Fighting is virtually eliminated when objects in the scene conflict.

Data

• Texture mapping and model optimisation tools: These allow greater control over the appearance of CAD data once it has been imported into Visionary Render, such as the mapping of textures and generation of normals. Users can improve rendering performance and reduce memory footprint by optimising a single model, or the whole scene, with a couple of mouse clicks.

• Importers:  Many new and updated importers, including FBX for better integration with Revit, Inventor, and other AutoDesk products.

Animation

• Visual representation of Animations: Allows the animation path to be edited visually using 3D handles and lines. Users can see exactly where their animation paths will take their objects and can edit these, both on the desktop and immersively.

Immersion

• Integration of Oculus DK2 and zSpace, bringing Visionary Render into ActiveDesk.
• New laser manipulation mode, which allows immersed users to both remotely manipulate distant objects and to interact with the 2D GUI.

Dynamic Sections

• Capped sections: We received many requests for this feature, as it helps users to render cap geometry when enclosed geometry is sectioned.  It even fills in the gaps of a section, which makes inspection of cross-sections much clearer to understand.

General Enhancements

• Dozens of refinements made to the functionality of the User Interface
• Memory usage optimisations for very large scenes
• Significant application performance and stability improvements
• Improvements to scripting with new maths and vector libraries
• New floating licensing system

Watch the latest Visionary Render videos