Engineers Assemble. If you’re a product engineer in charge of designing the latest and greatest manufacturing creations, it’s officially “Tony Stark” time. If Philip K. Dick is more your speed over the Marvel Cinematic Universe, than how about “Tom Cruise” time in Minority Report? Siemens and Sony recently introduced a solution that combines the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio with Sony’s new XR head-mounted display (HMD), SRH-S1—designed using Siemens’ own NX software—insert chicken vs. egg debate here.

Simply put, all those flashy, tech-savvy computer dashboards from science fiction films are no longer science fiction. I’ve seen quite a bit of this in early 2024—just when you think product engineering couldn’t get more intuitive along comes Sony’s XR technology.

“Sony succeeded in implementing NX in the fastest schedule in the world and we were able to improve our design process productivity by 25 percent,” said Seiya Amatatsu, head of Sony’s XR Technology Development Division at Siemens Realize Live event in Las Vegas. “Although significant advancements have been made with NX, I wanted to achieve further evolution with a product that brings innovations allowing direct editing in an immersive environment. I believed that could be realized with Siemens and as a result, the XR head-mounted display was developed that could bring innovative products to market more rapidly.”

Sony’s XR head-mounted display is a fundamental part of the forthcoming NX Immersive Designer, an integrated solution that combines Siemens’ NX, exclusively with Sony’s breakthrough XR technology to deliver immersive design and collaborative product engineering capabilities.

“Our head-mounted display and dedicated controllers lets you create more intuitively in a fully immersive environment, allowing you to move freely between the virtual and real worlds—collaborating and creating with colleagues around the world in real time—and it will enable more innovation,” explained Hirohito Kondo, deputy general manager, XR Business Development Division, Product Management Department of Sony.

“We’re not just viewing designs. This is about doing meaningful hands-on engineering. That is why the image quality is so important—as well as the precision of the controls and even the comfort of the headset—because together, it lets you collaborate more, engineer better, and innovate faster. It lets you do real, meaningful engineering—and without ever having to build a physical prototype,” Kondo added.

Based on discussions at Realize 2024, it appears the user can create multiple virtual monitors and design/manipulate objects with intuitive hand controllers. It’s basically supercharging an engineer’s ability to create high quality, realistic renderings in a virtual space. Just another tool for the industrial metaverse and what the future of manufacturing can look like.

Siemens’ NX Immersive Designer is expected to launch at the end of 2024. To register your interest in Siemens’ NX Immersive Designer and learn more about how it is going to change the landscape of immersive visualization and collaboration, visit:

plm.sw.siemens.com/en-US/nx/products/nx-immersive-designer/