Affordable Virtual 4D Environment for Shipbuilding Using Commodity 3D Gaming Hardware

Geographically distributed project teams have become the norm in ship design and construction. Existing remote collaboration techniques either do not work well for the very large 3D product models encountered in shipbuilding, or are prohibitively expensive. The result is longer time frames for project completion and substantial expenditures for travel. In the computer game industry, by contrast, it is routine for thousands of people to be communicating with each other while simultaneously immersed in very large, highly realistic 3D environments. This project proposes to investigate the feasibility of developing a high performance collaborative virtual environment that meets a wide range of needs for remote collaboration for design and construction planning reviews, operation and maintenance analysis, manufacturing problem resolution, simulation based training, and ship repair surveying. All of this will be done using an ultra high performance commodity hardware platform that costs less than $400. The proposed system design incorporates a variety of non-3D data needed for shipbuilding such as product structure, construction activities and time schedules. Projected savings for the U.S. shipbuilding industry are estimated at $1,440,000 per year. The technology being proposed here applies to a much larger market than just shipbuilding.