Kia concept car designed using AR device

MANILA: Kia Corporation has designed its latest concept car with the use of Apple Vision Pro.

Dubbed the Kia Vision Meta Turismo, the futuristic-looking vehicle appears to have plenty of aggressive-looking angles and a host of straight lines that not only add to its modern appeal but somehow give fans a glimpse of its capabilities.

So far, we know that it has suicide doors, a see-through roof, aerodynamic wheels, and a sleek dashboard.

And while its looks are not something we are surprised to see, as many concept cars tend to look futuristic after all, what’s interesting is the approach the designers took to transform an idea into metal. 

“Design begins long before a vehicle takes physical form. It starts with a philosophy, an idea, and is shaped through a process of evaluation, where proportion, perspective, and detail must be understood with precision. This critical phase of understanding is one of the most demanding aspects of the design process,” Kia Corporation wrote in a press release.

“Before a design can exist as a car in the physical world, it must first be understood from all angles. Not just as a sketch or a render on a screen, but as an object with proportion, presence, and precision,” it added. 

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Advantages of Apple Vision Pro

According to the Hyundai-owned car manufacturer, its global design teams worked with Apple Vision Pro and leveraged the mixed-reality headset’s technology as a key enabler in the design process.

Through it, Kia’s teams across its global design network were able to experience and refine digital design concepts in immersive, full-scale environments before they became a physical entity.

Advancing timelines

By interacting with the design at an early stage, the use of Apple Vision Pro helped the team reduce the time between concept development and evaluation — enabling faster, more iterative refinement. 

“At Kia, we’ve been incorporating immersive technology in our workflow for close to a decade. It’s been fascinating to see this digital technology impact and transform what was a very physical design and modelling process. Apple Vision Pro has really enhanced and elevated our ability to evaluate our designs,” Kia Global Design Executive Vice President Karim Habib said.

“We try to see the vehicles we’re designing as real as possible, as quickly as possible – reducing the time from sketch to reality. The fidelity of what can be seen through the Apple Vision Pro head-mounted display means that what has taken months in the past can be reduced to a matter of weeks or even days,” he added. 

Design components of the Kia Vision Meta Turismo that benefited from this system include its cab-forward architecture, low, wide stance, and ‘soft geometric’ surface language.

Per Kia Corporation, its designers were able to assess these qualities in an ultra-immersive, full-scale context and allowed them to refine the balance between technical precision and sculptural form with greater clarity and confidence.

Real-time global collaboration

Collaboration between different teams were also made easy.

With the concept car uploaded in a shared virtual environment, design teams — which are from different locations — were able to work together real-time. 

“It’s changed the way we collaborate as a team, allowing us to see the same object, at the same time, and in the same space,” Habib explained.

“We can engage in meaningful discussions about lines, surfaces, color, material – all the aspects that need to come together to create a well-designed, cohesive product,” he added.

According to the brand, this collaborative, real-time approach enhanced itss design teams’ ability to explore, evolve, and deliver the brand’s “Opposites United” design philosophy, defined by the integration of contrasting ideas – whether physical and digital, emotional and technical, or natural and synthetic – into a cohesive entity.

Technologically enhanced, human-centered

While the use of Apple Vision Pro in the development of the Kia Vision Meta Turismo undeniably enhances the process, the creative responsibility remains human-centered.

Because the system — with its high-performance computing platforms, including those enabled by technical partner NVIDIA — makes the design process more intuitive and accessible, the brand’s designers can focus on innovation. 

“It comes back to design being a human-centric endeavor,” Habib noted.

“Technology is an essential and integral part of the design process – there’s no denying that – but the Apple Vision Pro and spatial computing free you, or make that technology invisible, allowing you to immerse yourself in the creative part of the process,” he added.

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