Towards desktop-based VR for engineering environments driven by autostereoscopic technology

Current engineering requirements focus on the integration of different services, technologies and products. Especially within the CAD/CAE domain the different disciplines of construction and analysis are traditionally separated. An integration of the process chain being complemented by innovative technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) is one of the challenges that is addressed in this work. We set the foundations for an integrated CAD/CAE environment covering such topics as small feature identification, interactive mesh refinement, and interactive feature dragging. Interactive 3D real-time graphics is one way to analyse and interact on the ever growing CAD/CAE data more efficiently and more intuitively. VR applications have shown its power in this respect already. However, compared to desktop systems the number of VR installations in the industry is still low. This is on the one hand due to high investment costs and space demands of typical VR hardware and on the other hand due to the users lack of acceptance for entirely new 3D user interfaces. In this work we use low-cost desktop VR systems based on autostereoscopic displays (Hybrid Desktop) together with a concept of 2D/3D interaction that promises a higher user acceptance.