Bentley Systems is developing applications using the NVIDIA Omniverse platform for photorealistic, real-time visualisation and simulation of digital twins of massive-scale industrial and civil infrastructure projects.
The Bentley iTwin platform has been integrated with NVIDIA Omniverse to provide a graphics pipeline for AI-enhanced, real-time visualisation, and simulation of infrastructure digital twins. This integration allows engineering-grade, millimeter-accurate digital content to be visualised with photorealistic lighting and environmental effects on multiple devices including web browsers, workstations, tablets, and virtual reality and augmented reality headsets from anywhere in the world.
NVIDIA Omniverse is an open platform for virtual collaboration and physically accurate simulation. Based on NVIDIA RTX technology, it leverages the Universal Scene Description (USD) common interchange format for real-time 3D visualisation and simulation that was originally developed by Pixar to simplify entertainment industry workflows and is now being adopted in other industries including architecture, construction, and engineering, and digital factories.
Bentley iTwin is an open, scalable cloud platform that enables engineering firms and owner-operators to create, visualise, and analyse digital twins of infrastructure assets. Digital information managers use it to incorporate engineering data created by diverse design tools into a living digital twin and align it with reality data, IoT data, and other associated data without disrupting their current tools or processes.
Bentley Systems’ CEO Greg Bentley said, “Visualisation and simulation underpin many of the use cases for infrastructure digital twins. The collaboration of Bentley iTwin and NVIDIA Omniverse is delivering real-time, immersive 3D/4D experiences that will enable true-to-reality, physics-based simulation of even the largest and most complex infrastructure assets.
“GPU-computing is transforming the world of engineering and construction and promises to unleash the potential of AI for simulation and advanced analytics in infrastructure digital twins.”
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA said, “Modern infrastructure are magnificent feats of engineering. NVIDIA and Bentley share a vision of physically based digital twins – so accurate and realistically simulated that they will revolutionise everything from infrastructure design to operations.
“NVIDIA Omniverse was built precisely to realise this vision – to create shared virtual worlds that are simulated with physical and photo realism. We are delighted Bentley is developing applications for infrastructure digital twins on NVIDIA Omniverse.”
High-performance infrastructure visualisation
It is said that the combination of the Bentley iTwin platform and NVIDIA Omniverse provides an excellent, high-performance user experience at a scale that had previously not been possible.
The integration of the capabilities of the Bentley iTwin platform and NVIDIA Omniverse enables users to virtually explore massive industrial plants and offshore structures as if they are walking through the infrastructure in real time, for purposes such as wayfinding and safety route optimisation.
“The industry is moving in a positive direction toward more automated and sophisticated tools that improve client outcomes,” said Donna DeMarco, plant information modeling at Jacobs. “Jacobs is proud to partner with Bentley in leveraging tools like iTwin linked with NVIDIA Omniverse to achieve strong results for our clients.”
Image credit: Houston Waterworks Team, a joint venture of Jacobs Engineering Group and CDM Constructors
Below is video of the NVIDIA RTX technology (credit: NVIDIA Omniverse)
