CC Jul-Aug 2022

TECHNOLOGYfocus
Extending reality
Bentley Systems implements extended reality, using NVIDIA's CloudXR, to push the boundaries
of digital realities for the ITER fusion reactor project
Afascinating discussion was
presented at the NVIDIA global
conference about the next phase
of digital reality presentation - beyond
virtual and augmented reality -between
William Cannady, technical product
manager at NVIDIA, and Greg
Demchak, director of the digital
innovation lab at Bentley Systems. The
discussion focused on NVIDIA's
extended reality solutions, and how
Bentley is using them within a digital
twin ecosystem to interact with large
complex engineering models, using
virtual reality (VR) and holographic
headsets and leveraging game playing
experiences and the cloud.
Greg demonstrated the work that he
was doing in his lab with his
development team, backed up by actual
end users with complex real-world data
sets. He also introduced the concept of
extended reality, digital twins, and the
emerging subject of the metaverse for
industrial-scale use.
William put that in context. Extended
reality (XR) provides another level of
dealing with digital realities. "Virtual
reality," he said, "effectively obfuscates
your senses and presents an artificial
world for you to see and experience.
Augmented reality primarily focuses on
taking existing views and cameras and
augmenting helpful data that lay on top
of it to provide more information about
what you are viewing. And then," he
continued, "there's mixed reality, a
combination of both virtual and
augmented, that takes the spatial
awareness of the existing view and
overlays interactive and augmented
components. All three of these
technologies make up extended reality
and can be used interchangeably."
Greg then explained that XR was now
being tested in a real-life scenario-the
fusion nuclear reactor, ITER, where
Bentley Systems is testing VR
applications on top of CloudXR,
NVIDIA's platform for VR solutions.
ITER is one of the largest experimental
energy projects in the world. Situated in
southern France, the 35 collaborating
nations are building a massive tokamak,
which is a magnetic device that
produces fusion in an experimental way
by generating energy in the same way
that the sun generates energy,
theoretically producing a 10-fold return
on energy input. "It is a huge,
complicated project," Greg explained,
"intended to generate plasma-and a lot
of heat. And, from that, it produces
electricity." The key is fusion, not fission,
and the need to create the extreme
conditions to maintain plasma at
temperatures inside the tokamak that
exceed that of the center of the sun.
The magnets holding the plasma
together are some of the most powerful
magnets ever produced on Earth.
Despite the huge cost, it is hugely
important because it is also one of the
most environmentally friendly sources of
energy with no carbon dioxide or
harmful atmospheric emissions,
inherently safe and fulfilling our need for
carbon-neutral energies.
The project is huge-a seven-story high
assembly hall containing the 30-by-30-
meter tokamak vessel constructed off
site, assembled and dropped into
place. It also includes a massive
amount of detailed wiring and the
installation work that goes along with it.
The total project includes 39 buildings
centred around the Pre-assembly Hall,
with its massive overhead cranes and
the Tokamak Assembly Hall, all
modelled in extreme fabrication-level
detail. "And there is the problem,"
explained Greg. "How can we provide a
high-quality digital experience of this
huge project, even simulating its
construction bit by bit?"
"To enable the workers to simulate the
project's construction, you need a VR
and mixed-reality experience, but we're
dealing with highly detailed fabrication
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July/August 2022