Virtual Reality Interface for Multidisciplinary Physical Analysis of Space Vehicles

Physical analysis of Space Vehicles during the pre-launch phase is often performed using mono or multidisciplinary software tools developed for the specific research intent. The mentioned tools, their methods and their results are seldom accessible and rarely deeply understandable outside the single research groups. This paper presents a solution based on a new technical and interaction design. We encourage to interface Virtual Reality 3D systems with the tools that perform the quantitative physical analysis of given space vehicles, as this approach improves productivity and communication effectiveness and brings consisting benefits to the engineering and design collaborative processes. We report an evaluation of this method based on the implementation of the mentioned system at the Collaborative System Engineering center at Thales Alenia Space in Torino, Italy, as part of the project STEPS2. This evaluation showed that users found the Virtual Reality interface easy to use and likely to be useful in their own work.