VR Family – Planting a seed for engineers that will transform the everyday of tomorrow
There are many reasons, why we as Siemens are present at the Hannover Messe and similar public tradeshows every year. This story looks at it from a slightly different angle. A very personal angle. This is why I believe my team and myself are fulfilling a greater purpose in being there, year after year, demonstrating the power of modern Computer Aided Engineering and Virtual Reality to the masses – and to one very specific group in particular...
The Micky-Mouse Goggles
Sunday, November 17, 1996 – 20:52h. Somewhere in Germany. Banned, he stared at the curved 23 inch screen of the tube television. It was just insanely cool. Oh, if only he could afford a camera like this and those goggles.
The closest he ever got to what was just on TV was playing this freeware 3D Tetris game, wearing these odd-looking green-and-red eye “glasses” he once gathered from a Micky Mouse comic – a major gimmick at the time! Back then, it was already mind-blowing to him. But a system like this? Wow, that would be cool. He could create videos of himself and his mates doing some rollerblade tricks – a video they would later all watch hanging out on the couch, their goggles on – in full 3D.
He thought, “Why don’t the big Hollywood companies use this technology to create entire movies?” Watching the whole world in 3D – from home – on your TV – how crazy is that. He dreamed of watching James Bond – Golden Eye, completely in 3D!
A virtual windtunnel – in 1996
His dream got interrupted by the next big thing on the TV screen. It became even more surreal A car! A virtual car, in a virtual wind tunnel!? All inside the computer? In 3D – with wind that, they claimed, was flowing around the car like in reality?
He tried to stay cool. I mean, he was 13, he had grown out of the overly-excited phase of any boy for anything that has four wheels and an engine. His super-trump days with “Supercars” were long over.
Come on, he said to himself, how good can such a computer simulation of the wind around a car be? This has probably nothing to do with the real flow around a car.
And yet, no matter how hard he tried to be the cool teenager (who was he trying to fool anyway?), this 3 dimensional digital model of a car and the airflow around did not let him rest. I wonder what it costs to do something like that? And I wonder what kind of PC one needs? For a quick blink he turned around – not to miss too much on the TV show – and stared through the open door into the office where his 486DX2-66 MHz at turbo clock speed (needless to say the turbo button was always on) was occupying dad’s office desk. The red-n-green Micky-mouse goggles were still lying next to the PC.
VR dreaming of a boy
I wonder if one could one day combine those 3D simulations with those 3D goggles, he thought. How cool would that be: dive into a completely computer generated three-dimensional world that almost looks and feels and even behaves like the real physical world. Just wearing a pair of goggles, connecting them to his PC and then walk through a virtual wind tunnel, or beam himself onto a boat, or an airplane.
I wonder if one day I can do something like that for a living? That would really be exciting: An engineer that looks at the airflow around a car, or the flow around a ship or an airplane, to make it better, more streamlined, faster. And then you use those fancy googles to show the things you do to other engineers, to discuss results and make a better product. Or to anyone, who could then maybe, learn something really interesting about the exact car they would later buy. And you showed it to them before it even existed. You would show to passengers that are afraid of flying, how you and your engineering colleagues do everything to design an aircraft that is super safe. One that you can guarantee flies before it ever even exists in reality. Or you would show to some big boss in a company all the good things engineers do in the company to make the world a better place. That’d be pretty cool…
The hard crash of 1996
His dream got interrupted by the harsh crash on the TV screen. A crash of two cars. All simulated in 3 dimensions. An airbag. A lot of colors. Oh boy, how they had loved to crash their matchbox cars back in the days.
That night, he could not sleep. The excitement did not go away. The next morning he woke up really tired. But the positive excitement of last night had given way to a feeling of sadness. Suddenly it all indeed felt like an intangible surreal dream of that childish little boy that played super-trump and crashed his matchbox cars. It felt so far away, so unreachable that he just tried to not think about it anymore.
As he grabbed his back-pack from the office to head to school, he stared at his PC and the Micky Mouse goggles. Those sh*tty toy-goggles are of no use anyway, 3D Tetris in red and green, what a waste, he mumbled to himself and dumped them into the trash. As he left the room – for the first time in his PC’s life – he released the turbo-toggle button from the 482DX2-66Mhz.
The throwback message
Tuesday, November 28, 2023 – 22:46. Somewhere else in Germany He was about to go to bed when the messengers beep caught his attention. It had been a long working day, preparing the demonstrator for the upcoming Hannover Fair in spring next year. He was really tired when the message by one of his PhD mates reached him. All it contained was a link to a youtube video, and the comment “Minute 37:08”.
He clicked on the link, and – like in a bad movie – no, actually – like in a very good movie, it all came back to his mind. Him, lying on the floor in front of the TV, wrapped in a blanket as he usually did, watching the “Knoff-Hoff” show, the show around technology, physics and cool experiments, he never missed (and giving him the Sunday-evening-chance to stay up a little longer)…But while he was 100% certain he will have watched that specific episode back in the days (as he never missed one those days), he could not remember it. And yet it was a stunning moment in so many ways.
From storytelling science he knew that every good author plants this seed early in the story, typically something, that, by the time it appears in the story it seems somewhat irrelevant to the character. Something that briefly appears, the character does not really take note of, or pushes away and then it disappears again for almost the entire story. But then, towards the very climax, when everything cumulates, it unfolds and all-of-a sudden the many things that happened to the protagonist along the way, suddenly all make sense to him – and the audience. Suddenly, a deeper truth is revealed, and the watcher or reader has this incredibly beautiful a-ha moment together with the protagonist that elevates a well told story to something that moves you.
An engineering career story
That moment, he became the watcher of his very own story. Suddenly, it all made sense to him. Him studying physics, doing his thesis on fluid dynamics, doing a PhD in automotive engineering. On fluid dynamics simulation. Using a cluster so big and powerful, the 13 year old boy would have never imagined something like that would ever exist. Starting as a CFD simulation engineer at a leading industrial software company. Helping his engineering peers to make the most out of their use of the CFD simulation software. Finally, the ultimate move: becoming a technical marketing engineer. And build a team that shares the same vision. With only one goal:
Combine those 3D simulations with those 3D goggles
To dive into a completely computer generated three-dimensional world that almost looks and feels and even behaves like the real physical world. Just wearing a pair of goggles, connecting them to a PC and then walk through a virtual wind tunnel, or beam himself onto a boat, or an airplane. To look at the airflow around a car, or the flow around a ship or an airplane, to make it better, more streamlined, faster.
And then, together with your team, you use those fancy googles to show the things you do to other engineers. To discuss results and make a better product. Or to anyone, who could then learn something really interesting about the exact car they would later buy. The car that you showed them before it even existed. You show to passengers that are afraid of flying, how you and your engineering colleagues do everything to design an aircraft that is super safe. One that you can guarantee flies before it ever even exists in reality. Or you show to some big boss in a company all the good things engineers do in the company to make the world a better place.
His mission was accomplished. That moment his whole story unfolded in front of him, with that crazy feeling that he now knew what the inciting incident probably was.
One thing left to do, for VR family
And while the Knoff-Hoff show is long gone, green-red goggles are now wireless 4k headsets with 90 fps and the Industrial Metaverse is on the rise, there was only one thing left for him and his team to do:
Plant a tiny little seed in the next generation. For engineers that transform the everyday of tomorrow
And for him – re-buy himself these pairs of Micky-Mouse Goggles on ebay. And work on this new Super-Trumps card game.
For you, the only things left to do are head to Hannover and visit us at the Simcenter booth. And if you can’t make it, find out more about Simcenter STAR-CCM+ Virtual Reality. And even if you don’t, the one thing you should be doing as an engineer is joining us in inspiring the next generation of engineers. Engineers that transform the everyday of tomorrow.
