On November 9, the NVIDIA GTC2021 conference was held online. At the meeting, NVIDIA released NVIDIA Omniverse™, a technology platform for virtual world simulation and collaboration for 3D workflows.
It is the culmination of NVIDIA’s entire work system. As a comprehensive platform, it brings together leading-edge graphics computing, physical simulation and artificial intelligence technologies to better connect creatives, scientists, physicists and computer experts in the virtual world.
NVIDIA Omniverse features new capabilities such as AR, VR and multi-GPU rendering, and integrates infrastructure, industrial twin applications with software from Bentley Systems and Esri. For example, NVIDIA CloudXR has been well integrated on a toolkit for building native Omniverse applications and microservices called OmniverseKit, as an enterprise-grade immersive streaming framework that allows users to interactively The Omniverse experience is streamed to their mobile AR and VR devices.
OmniverseVR achieves full graphics and real-time ray tracing, allowing developers to build their own VR tools on the platform and enjoy the configuration functions directly. OmniverseXRRemote provides virtual cameras and AR capabilities that allow designers to view their assets with full ray tracing on iOS and Android devices.
OmniverseFarm allows teams to use multiple workstations simultaneously, providing support for tasks such as synthetic data generation or file conversion. OmniverseShowroom allows non-technical users to use Omniverse for technical demonstrations, showcasing the platform’s real-time physics and rendering technology.
At the GTC conference in the fall of 2020, NVIDIA launched the public beta of Omniverse. Currently, the public beta version of Omniverse already has 14 programs based on OmniverseConnect and extensions, and more than 15 third-party independent applications (ISVs) that support Universal Scene Description (USD). There are more than 70,000 users worldwide, and technicians from more than 700 companies including BMW Group, CannonDesign, Epigraph, Ericsson, construction companies HKS and KPF.
There are multiple components under the Omniverse system, including NVIDIA Omniverse Avatar, a technology platform for generating interactive AI avatars, and Omniverse Replicator, a synthetic data generation engine for training AI.
OmniverseAvatar: A technology platform for generating interactive AI avatars
OmniverseAvatar connects NVIDIA’s technologies in speech AI, computer vision, natural language understanding, recommendation engines and simulation. Interactive avatars created on this platform have the effect of ray-traced 3D images that can see, talk about, and reasonably understand expressive intent. The platform has been used for industrial and commercial 3D modeling and rendering.
Jen-Hsun Huang shared multiple cases of using OmniverseAvatar in the NVIDIAGTC keynote speech, including ProjectTokkio for customer support, NVIDIADRIVEConcierge for always-on in-vehicle intelligent services, and ProjectMaxine for video conferencing.
Avatar can easily customize AI avatars according to the needs of different industries, helping companies process various orders such as restaurant orders, bank transactions, and personal reservations, which also opens up the way for the creation of AI assistants.
OmniverseReplicator: A synthetic data generation engine for training AI
The OmniverseReplicator is powerful enough to generate synthetic data for physics simulations for training deep neural networks. NVIDIA plans to launch the engine next year.
Rev Lebaredian, vice president of simulation technology and Omniverse engineering at NVIDIA, said: “With the OmniverseReplicator, we are able to create diverse, large-scale, accurate datasets and build high-quality, high-performance, secure datasets. This is critical for AI. .We have built two domain-specific data generation engines in-house, and it is conceivable that many enterprises will use the OmniverseReplicator to build their own engines.”
NVIDIADRIVESim™ for virtual worlds that host digital twins of autonomous vehicles and digital for steerable robots The twin virtual world NVIDIAIsaacSim? is NVIDIA’s first achievement based on this engine.
Under this condition, self-driving cars and robots can acquire skills in a virtual environment and then apply them in the physical world. These two applications can help developers guide AI models, fill in real-world data gaps, and label ground-truth data. The data generated in the virtual world can also cover a variety of different scenarios that are not often experienced in reality.
OmniverseEnterprise: A technology platform for 3D design and real-time collaboration
3D workflows are an integral part of many industries, including automotive, product, construction, and more. Before going into production, designers first need to design or simulate everything to be built in a virtual world. Today, under the background of the upgrading of traditional industries and the rapid development of emerging industries, more and more design teams are facing various difficulties such as adapting to the hybrid office environment and dealing with complex design issues. A platform for managing the 3D production process.
Omniverse Enterprise is such a platform, based on the fundamentals of Pixar’s UniversalSceneDescription, that can help designers in different industries transform complex 3D design workflows, allowing teams across the globe to collaborate in real-time across software through a shared virtual space.
Enterprise introduces a new feature that provides full software support for 3D agencies of all sizes, allowing designers to gain capabilities that enhance traditional visualization workflows. In addition, the platform is equipped with NVIDIA RTX technology, which can greatly improve the speed at which the designer can complete the rendering, and quickly complete the final design with realistic details in multiple iterations without incurring opportunity cost.
Using OmniverseEnterprise, NVIDIA, Lockheed Martin, and the U.S. State and Federal Forest Services are fighting wildfires. Amid a warming climate and dry air, massive forest fires have swept the world, costing nearly $20 billion in damages in the western United States alone last year.
NVIDIA and Lockheed Martin have jointly created the world’s first artificial intelligence laboratory dedicated to predicting and responding to forest fires, which uses NVIDIA AI infrastructure, NVIDIA Omniverse advanced visualization and virtual world simulation platform to determine fire levels, predict Fire development situation, and provide the best action recommendations for fire fighting.
Ericsson: Building a digital twin for 5G networks
With the continuous in-depth development and drive of 5G technology, the deployment of micro base stations and towers needs to be accelerated, and more and more new equipment entering the network will appear in different industries. Changes in these factors will increase the complexity of 5G network development and product design.
Ericsson is a telecommunications equipment manufacturer with decades of experience in radio network simulation, headquartered in Stockholm. In 2019, NVIDIA and Ericsson reached a strategic partnership. Since then, the two parties have penetrated the technologies and challenges in their respective fields during the cooperation process.
In NVIDIA’s Omniverse, Ericsson plays the role of building a digital twin for the 5G network, which accurately simulates the interaction between the 5G base station and the environment, improving performance and coverage to a greater extent. NVIDIA’s Omniverse platform provides key technologies that allow Ericsson to accurately simulate network performance across dynamic environmental elements; at the same time, it also provides benefits such as general telecom insight, faster development cycles, and enabling advanced networks at a lower cost.
Broaden development ideas, NVIDIA helps millions of developers enter a new era
With the help of NVIDIA Omniverse, millions of developers around the world can take their productivity to a new level. NVIDIA introduced advanced users of the Omniverse platform, how developers can build, extend, and many ways to connect tools and platforms to the Omniverse ecosystem at its Developer Day event, and announced the addition of Omniverse connectors such as Esri, Reallusion, Lightmap, Plans for popular tools like RADiCAL and ReplicaStudios that simplify complex workflows.
Users can access all platform applications with a free public beta license, use the Omniverse connector to sync custom 3D tools in real-time, and collaborate with others. With the gradual development of the NVIDIA Developer Program, Omniverse users can also access more new technical resources and related tutorials.
