Were they making 2D cars before?
My first thought exactly. Perhaps ‘3D models of cars in VR’ would’ve been a more solid title.
Ford's designers are learning to create 3D cars in VR
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Re: Ford's designers are learning to create 3D cars in VR
#12So what? The industry is far too conservative to bring any sort of radical design to mass market. This may as well be "Ford designers are learning to use A1 paper instead of letter sized"
>> So what? The industry is far too conservative to bring any sort of radical design to mass market.
I don’t think we need a radically new design for cars? ‘The Homer’ comes to mind. >.>
Re: Ford's designers are learning to create 3D cars in VR
#13They obviously showed a lot of meticulously mated actual 3D components but those were all prepared in a CAD program. Sure, the VR sketch might be useful, but the visual part of the video is quite a lot of marketing spin when it’s not showing the abstract lines. And I’m not sure that VR is the best way to “feel” a car in this way either. A car is an extension of your body, so it’s just as important where/what your sho…
Basically any usage of VR outside of gaming right now is guaranteed to just be marketing nonsense. The hardware simply isn’t there for real world professional usage as a productivity enhancing device. Some day we’ll be there, but the current state of even the most advanced HMDs is little beyond toy prototypes at this point.
> Basically any usage of VR outside of gaming right now is guaranteed to just be marketing nonsense.
I've seen some noise about VR used to locate pipes and wires when digging. That seems pretty legit.
I've also heard of VR used in conjunction with building construction, although it's less obvious to me just how useful it would be.
Re: Ford's designers are learning to create 3D cars in VR
#14I'm having trouble with the title. Wouldn't the title be equally as correct written as "create VR cars in 3D", or even just "create cars in VR". And that's before mentioning that 'create' is ambiguous. Build or design??? Could someone convince me on the use case? I get that designing a car in 20 hours is 'better' than in 20 weeks. But with all the 1000s of hours put into other considerations, is this going to make an…
My takeaway was that the designs might be different not just the same but done more quickly in VR. They stressed the point that in VR the designer can place themselves in the car and design at a "human scale." "We can get ourselves into the mind and the body, the virtual body, of our customer."
As far as the title, I think just dropping the "3D" might make it better?
Re: Ford's designers are learning to create 3D cars in VR
#15This is beautiful because I think this is just the beginning. Who knows if we'll still be designing cars in VR in the long run. But it is really nice that people are beginning to experiment and tools to help them do so are emerging.
As Paul Graham says, all good ideas have an "ugly duckling" phase.
Re: Ford's designers are learning to create 3D cars in VR
#16Were they making 2D cars before?
Maybe they're working up to 4D cars. That would get my attention.
Re: Ford's designers are learning to create 3D cars in VR
#17They obviously showed a lot of meticulously mated actual 3D components but those were all prepared in a CAD program. Sure, the VR sketch might be useful, but the visual part of the video is quite a lot of marketing spin when it’s not showing the abstract lines. And I’m not sure that VR is the best way to “feel” a car in this way either. A car is an extension of your body, so it’s just as important where/what your sho…
>And I’m not sure that VR is the best way to “feel” a car in this way either. A car is an extension of your body, so it’s just as important where/what your shoulders, knees and legs are/feel as to what the eyes can see.
Compared to looking at a flat computer screen, I would think this would certainly be a move in the right direction.
Re: Ford's designers are learning to create 3D cars in VR
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basically any usage of VR outside of gaming right now is guaranteed to just be marketing nonsense. The hardware simply isn’t there for real world professional usage as a productivity enhancing device. Some day we’ll be there, but the current state of even the most advanced HMDs is little beyond toy prototypes at this point.
> Basically any usage of VR outside of gaming right now is guaranteed to just be marketing nonsense. I've seen some noise about VR used to locate pipes and wires when digging. That seems pretty legit. I've also heard of VR used in conjunction with building construction, although it's less obvious to me just how useful it would be.
Both of those sound like applications for AR.
Re: Ford's designers are learning to create 3D cars in VR
#19This is beautiful because I think this is just the beginning. Who knows if we'll still be designing cars in VR in the long run. But it is really nice that people are beginning to experiment and tools to help them do so are emerging. As Paul Graham says, all good ideas have an "ugly duckling" phase.
Yes, I was thinking that many people thought that designing cars with a computer was silly in the early days of 3-D computer aided design. It seems the jump from creating tactile prototypes to designing on a computer is a much larger jump than moving from a flat computer screen to a VR HMD. I'm surprised there is such a negative response so far on HN.
Re: Ford's designers are learning to create 3D cars in VR
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basically any usage of VR outside of gaming right now is guaranteed to just be marketing nonsense. The hardware simply isn’t there for real world professional usage as a productivity enhancing device. Some day we’ll be there, but the current state of even the most advanced HMDs is little beyond toy prototypes at this point.
> Basically any usage of VR outside of gaming right now is guaranteed to just be marketing nonsense. I've seen some noise about VR used to locate pipes and wires when digging. That seems pretty legit. I've also heard of VR used in conjunction with building construction, although it's less obvious to me just how useful it would be.
Seems like AR would be a bit better there.