An Insider’s Look At Ford’s Virtual Reality Design Tools

Ford, like most modern manufacturing companies, is utilizing virtually realty tools at all levels of development. Gone are the days of designers and engineers hunching over drafting tables in a smoke-filled room, working on blueprints for what will next be molded out of clay. These days development is done on 20-foot ultra-high resolution displays with real world testing done in a virtual world. Designers can experience nearly every aspect of a future vehicle before any physical piece is constructed. Ford even employs virtual tools for the manufacturing phase to maximize efficiency there as well. I recently got a close look at a bunch of these tools and processes. I was granted access to everything from Ford's gigantic full vehicle motion simulator to the gigantic video wall. This is some impressive stuff.