Giorgio Ballestin is a Technical Product Manager and XR specialist at MARIN, the Netherlands’ maritime research institute, where he owns the XR development roadmap and helps shape long-term simulation and digital twin capabilities. In this episode, we unpack how MARIN’s ship handling simulators evolved from large CAVE and motion-platform bridge systems into hybrid setups that add VR for deck-level and off-bridge operations. Giorgio explains why VR adoption is slower than it looks on paper, including cybersickness, interaction design, and the lack of industry standards. You will learn how MARIN combines in-house hydrodynamics models with Unreal Engine visualization, where high fidelity matters and where it does not, and how multi-user scenarios are orchestrated by instructors and researchers. We also cover security constraints, local-first stacks, and why physical props and tracking often beat camera-based mixed reality.
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