Virtalis wins £3.5m deal to kit out Virtual Engineering base

THE UNIVERSITY of Liverpool’s new Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC) at Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus is to have all its Virtual Reality (VR) hardware and software supplied by Trafford-based company Virtalis. 
 
The company, which is headquartered in Sale, won the bid to provide the necessary equipment to the £3.5m centre following a tender process which was launched in the summer.

The centre is a University of Liverpool initiative in partnership with the Northwest Aerospace Alliance, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (Daresbury Laboratory), BAE Systems, Morson Projects and Airbus.  The Centre aims to provide a focal point for world class Virtual Engineering (VE) businesses,  predominantly in the aerospace sector.

Dr. Antony Robotham, executive director of the VEC, said: “We analysed a whole raft of factors when marking the tenders, but Virtalis was able to display technical competence, a great depth of support and value for money. 

“Theirs was the most complete solution and they have come up with a refined design that builds on our original specification.  We will end up with a very high resolution, bespoke, 13 sq m screen on our ActiveWall, which will allow us to display engineering systems at a 1:1 scale in stereo. 

“We’ll also have a suite of specially developed software tools that will help us to build our own interactive VR environments.”