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Engineers Use Hollywood Special Effects Technology To Increase Quality, Decrease Cost And Bring Cars And Trucks To Market Faster

Hundreds of vehicle development days and millions of dollars have been saved through the use of Hollywood special effects technology since General Motors opened its new Global Visualization Center (GVC) on May 24.

Located at the GM Tech Center in Warren, Mich., the GVC employs the same virtual reality (VR) technology used in many Hollywood feature films as a math-based tool to improve cars and trucks, deliver them to market faster and reduce product development cost.

More than a dozen GM vehicle programs have already benefited from the state-of-the-art virtual product development processes available in the GVC, including GM's full-size truck programs, which represent the highest volume vehicle architecture sold in North America.

"The first full-size truck program our engineers reviewed at the GVC resulted in the discovery and resolution of more than 120 issues that would have resulted in process delays and material waste in the build of physical properties," said Terry Woychowski, vehicle chief engineer for Full-Size Truck. "With the volume of our future full-size pickup and SUV programs, this tool is saving us an enormous amount of money and development time while improving vehicle build quality."

A critical part of GM's product development strategy to combine its engineering ranks into a powerful global organization, the GVC offers an interactive environment using full-size 2- and 3-dimensional stereo images to evaluate product and tool design as well as simulation results.

"Visualization and collaboration are crucial to revolutionizing GM's global product development platform strategy," said Bob Kruse, executive director of Vehicle Integration. "We are creating a physical and electronic environment for our engineers to bring vehicles to the global market effectively and efficiently, and key to this is GM's commitment to math-based tools such as the GVC that support virtual product development."

Virtual reality is not new to GM, which has been working with this technology since the early 1990s. The GVC is one of seven current GM VR centers, including another two at the Warren Tech Center and one each in Germany, Australia, Sweden and Brazil, with two more to open in Korea and Canada.

"We are using technology to help drive the transformation of our global product development capability," said Terry Kline, global information officer for GM Information Systems and Services. "The GVC is the latest innovative, high-tech tool that strengthens our global vehicle development process, helping expand our product portfolio to bring exciting, quality products to the right markets faster."

The GVC uses a variety of software tools including Alias' Maya software, which the film industry uses to produce high-quality visual effects and animations seen in features such as Spider-Man, Jurassic Park and the Harry Potter series.

Using this suite of software tools creates realistic vehicles for design reviews and enables GM engineers to make quicker, more cost-effective decisions to produce quality products. The result is a higher level of fidelity and realism than ever seen before in GM's engineering reviews.

State-of-the-art hardware includes:

- A VR PowerWalltm 24x10-foot projection screen with three BARCO Galaxy Digital Light Projectors (DLP) and new state-of-the-art InterSense wireless tracking system. This enables the display of full-size (1-to-1 scale) vehicles for engineering/manufacturing design reviews.

- A VR CAVEtm (Cave Automated Virtual Environment) with four projection areas (three walls and the floor) with four BARCO 909 Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) projectors that create a 3-D virtual environment (6x6x6 feet) where engineers can explore and experience designs that only exist digitally.

In addition to the GVC, GM is employing many other math-based tools to dramatically speed up the vehicle development process:

- Virtual wind tunnel technology helps optimize vehicle shape for less aerodynamic drag and improved fuel economy.

- Virtual powertrain cooling component alternatives can now be developed prior to hardware builds.

- Virtual crash simulation processes help engineers reduce costly physical testing, evaluate more design alternatives and provide design direction for body structure and restraint system components.

- Rapid modeling and analysis has enabled engineers to accomplish the same work in three days vs. five months with the older manual process.

GM's global engineering data network connects all of these math-based tools together, enabling engineers to collaborate daily on complex projects with their colleagues around the world. The network includes the automotive industry's fastest supercomputer, based on IBM POWER4 technology.