CLARTE and « i’m in VR » announce their partnership around IMPROOV-V2, an industrial Virtual Reality platform

CLARTE and « i’m in VR » have partnered to offer companies an industrial Virtual Reality platform combining their know-how and expertise. Their technology partnership will be reinforced, in 2014, with a strategic sales agreement.

A technology and sales partnership with « i’m in VR »

Combining their technology and industry know-how, CLARTE and “i’m in VR”, two historic players in Virtual Reality, have entered into a partnership to develop and market IMPROOV-V2, a new generation Virtual Reality platform for the design of products and industrial processes.
With unique remote collaboration modules between immersive systems, the IMPROOV-V2 platform is a major development of the first version launched by CLARTE in 2011, which today equips the virtual reality rooms of DCNS, STXEurope and NEXTER.
Based on the UNITY3D software that has been made compatible with all virtual reality systems using the MiddleVR middleware published by “i’m in VR”, IMPROOV-V2 offers incomparable improvements in performance (64bit platform), quality of the rendering (latest generation graphics engine) and simplicity of use and lowering the costs of implementation and operation.

IMPROOV-V2 will be available in the 2nd quarter of 2014.

The IMPROOV-V2 platform will either be sold as a license to be installed on the client’s site, or made available on a daily basis at the sites of CLARTE(Laval and Le Mans) and “i’m in VR” (Paris – location soon to be equipped with an immersive room open to professionals).

Sébastien Kuntz, “i’m in VR” CEO adds: “CLARTE was one of the first Virtual Reality players to be equipped in 2001 with an immersive room to manage industrial projects. Its development teams have designed custom, simple and powerful virtual reality software and applications addressing many French companies. By signing this partnership, we are pleased to benefit from CLARTE’s strong & proven experience.”

Jean-Louis Dautin, CLARTE’s Director comments: “With “i’m in VR” we found a long-standing and internationally recognised partner in our business. We share the same ambition to deliver to our clients easy to use and pragmatic systems, facilitating the usage of virtual reality on a daily basis “.

IMPROOV, a standard in the industrial world

CLARTE has designed and made available to industrial engineering departments a wide range of Virtual Reality tools, for a*n easy adoption of this technology on a daily basis*. The software has been improved integrating feedbacks from major accounts (DCNS, STX Europe, NEXTER, LACTALIS, PlasticOmnium, etc.) and from SMEs. Based on their expertise with the Ergo-wide 3 platform – dedicated to ergonomic workplace and production lines’ design, CLARTE developed, in 2011, the first version of IMPROOV. The ambition of this new tool is broader: design of products and processes, analysis of the arduousness of production tasks, operators’ training, maintenance studies, etc.
Interactive visual display in 3D of a digital mock-up, 1:1 scale immersion with head-tracking, dynamic construction of an avatar representing the postures and movements of an operator, real-time ergonomic dimensioning (using RULA and OWAS standards), and more. IMPROOV can be deployed in a very wide range of contexts, based on the requirements of industrial engineering offices.
IMPROOV-V2 offers a range of add-ons to facilitate integration with engineering offices’ existing systems and methods: import and export of 3D data in standard formats (3DXML, VRML, COLLADA, IFC, etc.), modification of the digital mock-up, real-time movement capture and analysis of posture, immersive modelling, ability to save the changes made during a work session.
IMPROOV-V2 can be connected remotely to monitor operations in the immersive system, both via a regular PC or through a sophisticated CAVE® type immersive system.

MiddleVR, an innovative tool in the field of virtual reality

MiddleVR is a plug-in that provides immersive virtual reality functions to 3D software such as Unity3D. These functions include management of stereoscopy, 3D sensors and cluster. MiddleVR also offers high-level building blocks (interaction, menus) to simplify the creation of applications and their deployment in most immersive virtual reality systems.
Major groups, research laboratories and universities use “MiddleVR for Unity” across the world (Europe, the USA, China, Japan, etc.).