Sale-based Virtalis Ltd (www.virtalis.com) has launched its VR4CAD, said to be the world’s first specialist virtual-reality (VR) software costing less than £1,000.

Virtalis managing director David Cockburn-Price said: “Workstations and graphics cards have been tumbling in price while soaring in performance. All of this has led to the ‘perfect storm’ for VR, but the final piece of the jigsaw has been the lack of professional VR software with which to create content.

“Our Visionary Render software boasts a Blue Chip user list, but it is beyond the reach of most companies. We therefore decided to make an accessible and affordable version that will allow people to take advantage of the falling cost of VR hardware.”

Unlike games-engine-based kits that require considerable know-how to develop a VR application program, VR4CAD is an ‘out of the box’ solution. It works with CAD packages that include CreoView, Solidworks, Autodesk Inventor, Catia V5, Open JT, Unigraphics NX, FBX and Collada.

VR4CAD transforms CAD models into full 3-D VR and can save viewpoints, annotations and snapshots. It also offers ‘ambient occlusion and shadowing’ with reference objects, to enhance the scene.

Upgrading to Visionary Render provides additional features such as collaboration, clustering, iRay, point clouds, terrain module and gallery.