Virtual reality gains a small foothold in the enterprise

"There is no way we could build thousands of prototypes," she says. "We would only be able to build a handful. But also, there is no way we could check in the physical world all the things we check in the virtual worlds. We can make intelligent decisions about our design, with respect to how we manufacture it, and that's a huge time save and cost save."

Ford is expanding its use of virtual reality, she adds. "We're actually creating another virtual space here in Dearborn [Michigan] to handle the overflow," she says. "We're so packed. We can't fit in what we can do in one day. It's been shown to be so valuable."

Ford also uses virtual reality for manufacturing assembly simulations, to help ensure the health and safety of workers, for training, and to study how drivers behave.

"We have driving simulations, another virtual reality application, where we'll bring in people who haven't slept all night and ask them to perform some tasks," she says. "And then perform an analysis on how they respond versus someone who's had their fresh cup of coffee and they're bright and cheerful in the morning."

Other manufacturing companies are also upgrading their virtual prototypes from simple 3D graphics on a monitor to fully immersive virtual reality systems such as those made possible by the Oculus Rift and similar devices.