Last year, one of the most modern centres for virtual reality in research and application came into being at the chair for design technology/CAD of Dresden Technical University's mechanical engineering faculty. The focus is above all on comprehensive visualisation of complete products and interaction with them. This is why new, fascinating insights - in the truest sense of the word - are be-ing made possible thanks to highly modern 3D project technology belonging to the Visual Decision Platform (VDP), a software solution from the Stuttgart-based provider ICIDO – The Visual Decision Company.

In TU Dresden's "Virtual Reality Lab", images are projected into a room (a so-called CAVE®) from five sides. This allows viewers to walk round the resulting three-dimensional model as if it were a real object. But they can just as much view an image from above or below or can investigate its interior. In  this way, they can see a vehicle previously only designed on a computer and not yet constructed, or a complex machine, for example, from the inside.

The system is based on the Visual Decision Platform (VDP) from the Stuttgart-based specialist ICIDO. For example, using this system it is possible to perform extensive ergonomics analyses or collision tests, thus massively shortening the decision-making process. "As the leading company in the environment of visual decision-making support, ICIDO offers precisely the products that enable enterprises to reach decisions swiftly and easily through visual support", confirms Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. R. Stelzer, holder of the chair at Dresden's university. Thomas Reiber, managing director of ICIDO, adds: "In cooperation with TU Dresden, we are once again proving that our solutions are capable of massively simplifying and accelerating decision-making processes through visualisation."

With the installation at Dresden Technical University, ICIDO is expanding its market leadership in the environment of complete virtual reality solutions and can tap further application areas in the high-technology region that is Dresden.

You can find further information of TU Dresden's Virtual Reality Laboratory on the TU Dresden Web site by searching for the key words 'Virtual Reality'.