Jaguar Land Rover today announced the opening of its new industry-leading 'Virtual Reality Centre' at the Design and Engineering Centre in Gaydon.

The 'state-of-the-art' design facility draws on advanced audio visual technologies with the projection power of the world’s highest resolution projectors to significantly speed up product development cycles following an investment of £2million.

Engineers and designers are able to see and interact with life-size, three-dimensional models of vehicles and components. The system reduces the need for physical prototypes, saving both time and money.

The most advanced facility of its kind in the world, Jaguar Land Rover's ground-breaking four-walled centre is a complete turn-key solution using cutting-edge projection technology, advanced motion tracking of the user's head and hands and is driven by advanced virtual reality software. The total solution provides a virtual reality environment like no other for simulating vehicle exteriors and interiors and capable of making bodywork appear solid or transparent, all at a resolution that is near photo-realistic.

Brian Waterfield, JLR Principal Engineer and Virtual Reality Centre Manager said: "Jaguar Land Rover has taken another giant step forward in its thrust for technological advancement; enhancing its design and engineering process to enable quicker, more robust decision making. This facility offers a different level of engineering, one that will help future our products to meet the demand of an ever changing market place."

Eight Sony SRX-S105 ultra-high resolution projectors – each capable of delivering the world's highest resolution imagery – provide a visual quality that clearly outstrips existing industry virtual reality Walls and CAVES. In the unique projector setup these produce photo quality interactive 3D imagery where pixilation on the rear-projection screens is almost impossible to see. The user wears 3-D glasses to experience 'ultimate realism' with an ultra-high resolution that is four-times the definition of full-High Definition TV!

Working in partnership with Sony, Sun Microsystems and ICIDO and Midlands-based HoloVis International Ltd, the JLR team was able to bring together all of the different components of the project to design, manufacture, install and support this next-generation virtual environment for Jaguar and Land Rover.

Stuart Hetherington, Managing Director, HoloVis International comments: "We spent just over 18 months working closely with Jaguar Land Rover and our chosen system partners to design, develop, test and benchmark the proposed solution prior to the project being approved. This gave everyone the confidence in the unique technological solution we were going to create, as well as our capability in delivering such an advanced turn-key system of this nature. This really is a world’s-first in this industry and we’re proud to have delivered this for such a prestigious client."