CHESHIRE, UK, Dec 17, 2014 – Lockheed Martin has recently installed a Virtalis ActiveWall in the UK. This system has been used in a major land vehicle program review. Lockheed Martin is a leader in systems integration and high technology products and services within its core aerospace and defense markets.

Extracting complex components in 3D

Ryan Neal

Ryan Neal, a research engineer at Lockheed Martin, explained: “Our customer, the UK’s Ministry of Defense, as well as our engineers and business development people, was able to prove-out views of the 3D model through visualization. This meant that, instead of producing detailed performance reports over several months, we were able to view a 3D mock-up of the model using Virtalis’ Visionary Render. In effect, words were replaced with interactive 3D pictures.”

As a result of the successful introduction of advanced 3D visualization technology to an extremely tight deadline, Ryan Neal was nominated for and won the prestigious Lockheed Martin Vector Award for Innovation. The award was presented at the Lockheed Martin UK Leadership Conference by Lockheed Martin UK chief executive, Stephen Ball.

Jumping into an immersive virtual environment with the Oculus Rift

Lockheed Martin has been an early adopter of Visionary Render software, which has only been commercially available since the beginning of this year. Visionary Render allows users to access and experience a real-time, interactive and immersive 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.

Lockheed Martin chose a transportable version of the ActiveWall, Virtalis’ installed, immersive, interactive 3D visualization system. It features a 3D DLP projector, a custom screen designed to be moved to different locations and a PC workstation to generate the active stereo images.