Bell V280 VR
Bell V280 VR
Leverage immersive storytelling in VR to market the capabilities of the V280, an aircraft that hadn’t been built. Use cutting edge virtual environments to communicate key selling points and mission critical improvements of the future aircraft.
Challenge
We needed to enable the client to market a product and focus on aircraft capabilities in an immersive way before the product had been built. Furthermore, the 1:1 scale model that is currently taken to trade shows is costly to move and can’t be taken everywhere, especially secure government buildings. The end user needed to see the potential of using the V280 in the fleet of tomorrow and experience that tangible improvement this aircraft will make to operations in the military.
Solution
We used the power of virtual reality to allow the user to take a flight on the V280 as a foot soldier. Users are able to experience the capabilities from beginning to end and fully understand the capabilities of the aircraft without needing to ship expensive models. After the success of this experience, we built a follow up experience further highlighting aircraft capabilities and began to port it over to other hardware solutions. We migrated this interactive HTC Vive experience to Gear VR and Oculus Go for the Bell sales team to have a portable solution they can toss in a briefcase. We then built an edge-blended projection set-up which allowed us to re-export the VR experience onto a 3D wall and create a more “classroom” style of learning.
Results
The client and their potential buyers loved the experience and were able to get thousands into a V280 over the course of multiple events. This experience is still used years later to help demonstrate the aircraft selling points, to generals and civilians alike. While The Vive Pro was the best solution to kick the project off, we have since found ways to redeploy the assets created for the initial experience into a variety of other media. This can now be used in multiple portable headsets as well as in a 3D classroom based environment, allowing for the VR content developed in 2016 to breathe new life in 2019.
