Boeing Wants to Design Planes in the Metaverse

The word “metaverse” has been uttered more times in the last few months than any of us would have expected, but Facebook — sorry, Meta is a powerful force on the internet. If Mark Zuckerberg wants the metaverse, Facebook is probably going to make it happen in some capacity, and Boeing wants in. The troubled aerospace firm hopes to improve its design process by doing it in the metaverse. Of course, exactly what that means is still up in the air.

If you ask Meta, the metaverse is an evolution of the internet. It would feature virtual reality and augmented reality content that interacts with the real world in a way that current systems only allude to. Many others see it as a way for Facebook to vacuum up and monetize even more of our personal data. For Boeing, the metaverse could be a way to address critical design issues. According to Boeing’s chief engineer, Greg Hyslop, more than seven out of ten quality issues trace back to a design issue. Simply calling these “quality issues” isn’t entirely sufficient — Boeing’s engineering failures have cost lives in recent years.

The 737 MAX suffered from a recurring failure of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which caused two fatal crashes. The planes were grounded globally from March 2019 to November 2020. Investigators say that Boeing ignored engineering faults, which led to the crashes. The company paid $2.5 billion in penalties and damages, and now it’s looking to emerge from the scandal and regain its market dominance. To do that, Boeing will invest $15 billion over the next decade to develop the digital technologies to help it get there.

Boeing has placed veteran engineer Linda Hapgood in charge of its “digital transformation.” Reuters reports that the effort involves more than 100 engineers. It will draw on successes like Hapgood’s 3D modeling of the 767’s engines. Using the 3D model and Microsoft HoloLens technology, Boeing improved quality by 90 percent.

However Boeing proceeds and regardless of what the metaverse becomes, this is not a magic bullet. There is a feeling in the industry that Boeing has emphasized shareholder returns over engineering prowess. As the company’s airplanes have come under suspicion, it has also fallen behind SpaceX in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The Boeing CST-100 Starliner has yet to complete its demo flight, which was first attempted in late 2019. The metaverse can’t fix that overnight.

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