Unlike the current products available in the market, like Apple Vision Pro or Meta’s Quest Pro, the head-mounted display, developed by Sony and Siemens will focus on the industry product engineering and design.
This comes at a time when the virtual reality headsets in the consumer space have seen decline. According to a December 2023 report by CNBC, the sales of VR headsets have declined by 40% to USD664 ..
However, Siemens is bullish on the potential business opportunity. Responding to a query from ET Prime at the Siemens’ RealizeLive 2024 media panel, Joe Bohman, Executive Vice President – PLM Products, Siemens Digital Industries Software, said that there are couple of reasons why they believe it will work in the industrial design space.
“The problem we all have now is that we are all designing 3D that does not exist. For years we have seen it on the screen. But seeing it on the screen and reality is a different experience,” he said.
He further explained that there have been several breakthroughs in terms of resolution, ability to easily shift between real and virtual worlds, and Sony’s input model that makes it easier to make changes to design real time. According to Bohman, these things will make a difference.
Hirohito Kondo, Deputy General Manager, XR Business Development Division, Product Management Department of Sony, said that the device is focused on doing meaningful hands-on engineering and that makes image quality important and precision of control.
While Bohman did not share the investment the company is making or price of the headset, he said that the amount will be in millions of dollars and the device will cost will be in several hundreds.
According to the company, the headset has been in the making for three years and will be a part of Siemens’ immersive engineering roadmap. Danny Sicking, Senior Director, NX Platform, told ET Prime that the platform is being co-developed by both companies.
Speaking at the Siemens’ RealizLive 2024 event in Las Vegas, Seiya Amatatsu, who heads Sony’s XR Technology Development Division, said that the company was able to improve the design process productivity by 30% when implementing the mixed reality headset.
This article was originally published by Swathi Moorthy for The Economic Times. Read the original article here.
