vScientist team organised the last phase testing of VR applications on 3D physics-based simulations by NTUA and MultiFluidX. Students and professors were excited to experience a new way of learning and gave us quality insights for further improvement of our applications!
During the project vScientist, we have generated various scenarios such as: a 3D airfoil in a virtual wind tunnel, a 3D virtual testing of a Marine Propeller and more. The cases were tested in the fluid mechanics lab of the School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at NTUA.
Virtual Reality Training is the digital simulation of lifelike scenarios for training purposes. Trainees enter a 360°, active learning environment, experiencing sights and sounds that dissolve the barrier between virtual and actual reality. Using the headset and controllers, trainees look, speak, and move about freely in a 3D virtual setting, interacting with simulated real-world tools, machinery, and other trainees and instructors.
Critically, with Virtual Reality, workplace scenarios that were once too difficult, expensive, or dangerous to train for (such as emergency protocols and disaster preparedness, hazardous material spills, realistic heights training, etc.), become vastly more practical, cost-effective, and safe in an immersive simulation.
When combined with story narratives and learning curriculum developed by subject matter experts, the result is trainees learning in the best way possible — through personal experience — significantly improving learning retention, team collaboration and workplace safety.
Physics-based VR training: An extra dimension that immersive learning provides
Our proposed solution integrates VR and CFD/AI-driven scientific simulations for a multimodal interaction where fluid dynamics results are passed to the user by means of gloves or haptic devices. The deployment of physics-based simulations and not just 3D rigid objects in a production environment allows for a VR system that enables mirroring variables such as velocities, pressures or calculated object forces to replicate them in real-time in the VR devices including haptic gloves. The novel platform and the integrated software tools will enable real-time data transfer and dynamic visualisation and increase by 100% the immersive learning experience as we have seen in our practice.
vScientist: Teaching with XR, Enhancing Education through Extended Reality and vScientist from CORTEX2
The developed workflow of the project vScientist, part of the EU project CORTEX2, was tested for evaluating how extended reality and #telecooperation can enhance education. Testing included the deployment of a new software for experimental wind tunnel tests for an aerofoil, which is considered to be a classic test case for students of fluid dynamics and are applicable across multiple engineering degree programs. The online virtual wind tunnel has given the students the opportunity to immerse into a virtual experiment and observe the underpinning physics of complex, unsteady, three-dimensional phenomena such as shock waves.
