With its headquarters in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK, Zerolight is at the forefront of immersive visualisation techniques for the automotive industry, regularly showcasing its virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) developments. Earlier this month Develop:Brighton took place and VRFocus caught up with the Zerolight team to find out what was new.
One of the core aspects of Zerolight’s VR solution is to provide car manufacturers with an immersive system for customers to buy their products. This is a VR experience where they can finetune features of a car purchase, such as interior trim or various alloy designs. With this in mind, Zerolight continually looks to optimise the software via the use of eye-tracking and heatmaps.
Using a headset like the HTC Vive Eye, Zerolight can monitor where a customer is looking, what draws their attention and how long they may look at specific areas. This information can then be tailored for different manufacturers, allowing them to add in more key options in the places that matter, offering a greater variety of paint colours for example. At the same time streamlining the experience so that customers don’t feel like they’re getting bogged down with endless options that they don’t want or need.
VRFocus saw this in action at an HTC Vive event in May, demoing a BWM showpiece that’s been a staple experience for a couple of years. Zerolight aims to ensure a highly immersive experience, so you start by standing next to the car to alter the outside design then step into the car and sit down in a racing-style seat – it wouldn’t work as well in an office chair – for that added sense of presence.
VRFocus had a chat with Alvaro Barua, a software developer at Zerolight discuss the current trend towards mobile-based headset such as Oculus Quest, as well as its continued efforts improving its VR solution with eye-tracking.
Check out the interview below, and for further updates from Zerolight, keep reading VRFocus.
