Virgin Galactic
Spaceship Cabin Design
Creating powerful new tools to design the world’s first commercial spaceship
As the spaceship interior was designed, there was a constant stream of development on the VR digital twin of the spaceship. This was to ensure the latest engineering data was always represented and that any new functionality was available to the design team. Making iterating on this unique design as quick and seamless as possible.
The spaceship was designed from the ground up inside VR, starting with a complete blank canvas into the final design being flown today. The result of this development process can be seen below.
All of this design work made use of several new innovations developed throughout the project to solve problems and challenges faced by the team. Some of the key features built are discussed below.
The Digital Twin
VR Collaboration inside a 1:1 digital twin of the spaceship was crucial to the project’s success. Daily design reviews were made possible with teams around the world instead of having to travel internationally. This allowed for decisions to be made faster and easier, with revisions often being made inside VR in realtime before being fed back to the CAD pipeline.
Colour/Material Evaluation
One of the most advanced tools developed as part of the project was one that provided the ability to select individually parts of the spaceship and then adjust its colour and material instantly. This allowed various interior concepts to quickly be mocked up for evaluation. These were then saved and showcased to the Virgin Galactic team. There was also the ability to change the scenery - viewing concept interiors at each stage of flight from ground, sky and space. All of this was networked inside VR as part of the joint virtual session.
Camera Tool
Capturing memories is one of the most important parts of the commercial astronaut journey, with people wanting to hold onto that moment they first experience space travel and micro gravity. Getting the perfect shot however, is not something easily tested due to the limited test flights. The VR Camera Tool developed, a world first at the time, allowed the media team to position virtual cameras all over the ship and render output with the same lens type and camera settings as real life - a process used today by Disney as part of their virtual production pipeline.
