By Valerie
2009 marks the Centennial of the first flight across the Channel by French pioneer Louis Blériot, with his now famous Blériot XI.
On July 25, 1909, Louis Blériot made history with his 37 minutes flight from Sagatte to Douvres above the Channel, oil leaking, wood cracking, wind blowing…
One hundred years after, I found myself visiting “Le Blériot XI” stand at the Paris Air Show Le Bourget. This stand was a collaborative project by Dassault Systèmes, the PLM Competency Center, the alumni association from Ecole Centrale, and Dassault Aviation.
On this stand, there was a Blériot XI. Experts will notice by my photo that it is not the Blériot XI, which made the famous flight across the Channel, but a Blériot XI-2. The difference? The second one is a two-seater, its engine “gnome” is a little more powerful, and it was built for the military. Still, for me, the feeling is the same, next to the Blériot XI-2, I touched history.
One hundred years after, we are writing another page of history with 3D. Because of PLM, it has been possible to make the digital mock-up of the Blériot XI-2, from the 2D plan, measures, and simulation. This digital mock-up will allow the construction of a new Blériot XI-2 in Brazil. It is a fascinating project , on which students from Brazil, India and France collaborated.
From the Le Blériot stand, I also wrote a page of my personal history because of 3DVIA Virtools. On June 17, 2009, I became one of the lucky pioneers to virtually fly above the Channel on board of a Blériot XI-2 digitalized.
That is what 100 years of difference makes!
Best,
Valerie
Valerie Ferret works as part of Dassault Systèmes’ Global Affairs and Communities team.
Published on June 19, 2009 | Tags: 3D, 3DVIA, aerospace, blériot, le bourget, paris air show, PLM, Virtools.
Posted in: Events, Industry | 2 Comments »
By Michael
Here I am at Dassault Systèmes, the company spezializing in 3D and lifelike experiences. Dare I ask:
- How useful is a virtual experience?
- How real is a computer generated environment?
Finally in “Disclosure ”, a movie from 1994 (not really a good one I think), where Michael Douglas solves the story’s mystery by means of entering a virtual library in full VR gear with data gloves and head set.
Where are we TODAY really – with virtual reality ?
To highlight this, let’s look at a recent example from the aircraft industry. Airbus’ manufacturing site for aircraft wings in the UK, Broughton, needed an immersive virtuality environment to validate methods and process improvements in manufacturing for their new A350XWB aircraft – before any physical model was built.
Their requirements included:
- Working directly with their CATIA and DELMIA PLM data and turn them into a 3D immersive virtuality model (without any need for translation)
- Utilizing head and hand tracking for full immersion
- Linking into a high-end haptic system, i.e. to have force feedback in reaction to manipulations on the model
- Making this an integral day-to-day tool for their manufacturing engineers
Airbus got all this from Virtalis, a UK-based system integrator specializing in immersive virtuality turnkey installations and a Dassault Systèmes cooperation partner in the virtual experience domain around 3DVIA Virtools, CATIA and DELMIA software. Virtalis was capable of putting this together to meet Airbus’ needs , based on the Dassault Systèmes PLM environment, all while incorporating key solution components from Haption, another member of the DS software partner community.
So this seems pretty real and useful, doesn’t it?
Meanwhile back in Hollywood: they don’t stop getting inspired and borrowing technology for their movie plots. This time they shopped at Creaform based in Quebec, a specialist in 3D scanning and reverse engineering and a solution partner of Dassault Systèmes as well.
Have fun with this detective crime-buster clip on Creaform’s website. Here’s a screenshot from it to entice you:
I’ll talk to you again soon with more cool stuff …
Best,
Michael
Published on March 3, 2009 | Tags: 3D, aerospace, airbus, dassault systèmes, immersion, immersive virtuality, Partners, VR.
Posted in: Partners, Virtual Reality | 2 Comments »
One hundred years after, I found myself visiting “Le Blériot XI” stand at the Paris Air Show Le Bourget. This stand was a collaborative project by Dassault Systèmes, the PLM Competency Center, the alumni association from Ecole Centrale, and Dassault Aviation.
Valerie Ferret works as part of Dassault Systèmes’ Global Affairs and Communities team.
