Core77 Design Awards 2012: zSpace, Professional Notable for Consumer Products
Posted in: Core77 Design Awards
Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards 2012! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com
- zSpace
- Designer: Whipsaw, Inc.
- Location: Mountain View, CA
- Category: Consumer Products
- Award: Professional Notable
zSpace is a remarkable new 3D visualization tool that enables designers, engineers and film makers to build, manipulate and view objects in 3D. Unlike 3d TV, zSpace objects are created and displayed in 3D with CAD in real-time high-definition. Your creations float magically in front of you as you imagine, develop, change, spin around and fly through them. Using a proprietary stereoscopic LCD display, trackable eyewear and an interaction stylus, virtual objects appear “solid” in open space, with full color and high resolution.
How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
Email announcement.
What’s the latest news or development with your project?
Since zSpace launched at Autodesk University in November, it has quickly gained notoriety. It’s been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered”; NASA’s “TechBriefs” newsletter, and Fast Company’s CoDesign website; and it received a “Best of Show” award at the Computer Graphics World conference in March 2012.
What is one quick anecdote about your project?
When we first saw this technology we were blown away. High-definition holographic objects floated in front of us and we could manipulate them completely. It was a designer’s dream. CAD came alive and felt so immersive, no longer limited by a 2D interface on a flat screen. It’s a rarity that a team of designers has an opportunity to design a product that refreshes the human-machine interface of a tool they use on a daily basis.
What was an “a-ha” moment from this project?
Initially, the virtual “zSpace” working area was only intended to occur “above” or “outside” of the display. While testing a number of ergonomic parameters, we tilted the prototype display to achieve more comfortable viewing angles. When the virtual CAD ground-plane was adjusted to fit these display angles, we discovered that an infinite amount of virtual working space had opened up “behind” the display glass. zSpace had become a virtual environment to design in, rather than just a virtual representation of a CAD object.
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