How extended reality is accelerating innovation through human‑centric digital engineering

Extended reality is recharging approaches to engineering and design, and FISITA’s Immersive Simulation webinar gave insight into how critical the technology is to future innovation

Extended reality (XR) systems are no longer a niche visualisation tool, but an enabler for the automotive industry. The topic was explored by Renault’s Stéphane Regnier, Stellantis’ David Defianas and General Motors’ Kevin Irrer in FISITA’s Immersive Simulation: XR in the Automotive Industry, State of the Art and Challenges webinar.

XR is a collaborative technology, bringing together engineering, design, manufacturing and customer experience, to reshape how vehicles are conceived, validated and brought to market.

At its core, XR brings together three essential ingredients: immersion, interaction and real‑time performance.

Unlike traditional CAE, which focuses on physics‑based computation, immersive simulation places the human directly inside the digital model – bridging the gap between numerical accuracy and experiential understanding. As Regnier noted, this combination allows engineers to experience a vehicle “as if they were in a real car”, enabling first‑person evaluation long before physical prototypes exist.

A spectrum of technologies

The XR landscape spans virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) and high‑fidelity visual simulation. These technologies sit along the real-virtual continuum, from fully virtual environments to overlays that blend digital content with the physical world. Defianas highlighted the rapid evolution of interaction modes – from handheld controllers to haptic gloves and natural hand‑tracking – supported by precise body, eye and environment tracking to maintain real‑time responsiveness.

Hardware innovation is equally dynamic. Large‑scale CAVE systems remain powerful tools for collaborative design reviews, while lightweight mixed‑reality headsets and emerging AR glasses are expanding accessibility. As Regnier said, the industry is moving toward “light devices to wear”, supported by cloud‑based GPU streaming that reduces the need for onboard computation.

Across OEMs, XR is already shaping engineering practice. Early‑stage design reviews can now take place inside full‑scale virtual cockpits, enabling teams to assess visibility, ergonomics and HMI behaviour with incredible realism. Mixed‑reality headsets allow physical components to be precisely aligned with virtual interiors, creating hybrid experiences that mirror real‑world use.

Visual simulation is also elevating perceived‑quality engineering. By comparing high‑accuracy renderings with real photographs, teams can evaluate material appearance, grain, colour matching and reflections long before tooling decisions are made. As Regnier emphasised, this allows engineers to “design right the first time”, reducing cost and shortening development cycles.

Defianas demonstrated how XR strengthens collaboration by bringing multiple simulations into a single shared virtual twin. Instead of siloed analyses, teams evaluate trade‑offs together, accelerating decision‑making. In manufacturing, XR supports assembly feasibility studies, cable‑routing validation, and “as‑designed vs as‑built” comparisons. Mixed‑reality training for EV safety procedures is already proving essential as electrification reshapes workshop skills.

Unlocking bandwidth

Irrer underscored a powerful insight: the human brain is an extraordinary visual processor. Immersive CAE leverages this capability by allowing engineers to step inside complex simulations – even when the topic is as in-depth as powertrain efficiency. Real‑time clipping, particle injection and volumetric fields enable intuitive understanding of hotspots, dead zones and flow behaviour; insights that are difficult to achieve through static 2D plots.

From engine cooling jackets to e‑motor oil distribution and virtual wind tunnels, immersive CAE is accelerating optimisation and strengthening engineering intuition. Looking ahead, Irrer sees opportunities in real‑time geometry modification, mixed‑reality overlays on physical components, and live CAE result updates, helping bring simulation and design into a continuous, interactive loop.

The next wave of XR adoption will be powered by open standards such as OpenUSD and OpenXR, enabling device‑agnostic workflows and unified master models. Meanwhile, generative AI and techniques like 3D Gaussian Splatting are transforming how virtual worlds are created. All of this is helping to reduce cost, accelerate scene generation and unlock new possibilities for marketing, engineering and customer engagement.

As Regnier concluded, XR is no longer an experimental technology. It is a strategic capability—one that will increasingly combine with AI to generate new data, model human behaviour and enhance digital twins. For an industry navigating rapid transformation, immersive simulation offers not just new tools, but a fundamentally new way of thinking, collaborating and innovating.