What is Omniverse?
Let’s start with the basics. Nvidia Omniverse is a platform for building and operating metaverse applications. Don’t worry if the word “metaverse” sounds new or confusing to you, we will explain.
Metaverse is a shared virtual 3D universe. Or, as NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang calls it, “the internet in 3D, a network of connected, persistent, virtual worlds.” We can describe it as an advanced version of a web network, where the 2D web pages turn into 3D spaces.
A standard language of the 2D internet is HTML. For the metaverse, it is USD, or Universal Scene Description. Similar to the internet, which needs a computer and engine network, the metaverse requires a computing platform. And this platform is Omniverse.
Omniverse is a USD platform that is “a toolkit for building metaverse applications and a compute engine to run virtual worlds.”
So, as you can now understand, the Omniverse platform is like a gate to a 3D universe, a metaverse, which links digital and physical worlds. It comprises all the technological advances of Nvidia and is a “network of networks.”
Nvidia Omniverse connects specialists across all industries and all disciplines, enabling real-time and synchronized workflows within the platform.
Omniverse uses specific technologies, which are:
- MDL (Material Definition Language) - to describe and simulate physically accurate materials;
- PhysX - an advanced real-time physics engine;
- AI (Artificial Intelligence) - to support building or autonomously generating worlds, make predictions, and automate processes;
- RTX (Ray Tracing Texel eXtreme) - hybrid rendering engine combined with an AI system to simulate light and matter physically accurate and in real time;
- USD (Universal Scene Description) - is a framework for interchange of 3D computer graphics data. It was created by Pixar and published as open source software in 2016.
Nvidia Omniverse is a door to virtual reality that can be used to design, build, and manage physical objects. The capabilities Omniverse offers are enormous, and we will talk about them a bit later.
What are the components of the Nvidia Omniverse?
Nvidia Omniverse includes various components that ensure its robustness and allow for uninterrupted operations and processes. Let’s discover some of them.
Nucleus
Nucleus is called the “collaboration engine” of the Omniverse platform. It is a database engine that allows users to exchange assets. Nucleus is a multi-user component that enables specialists to work together, create, and share their developments in real time.
Omniverse Nucleus can be installed in the private cloud, on-premises, or on a workstation. The solution uses a publish-and-subscribe model.
Nucleus benefits artists by rendering complex assets in real time. It allows for real-time collaboration across various applications and the fast embodiment of their ideas. Designers can use Nucleus to create and iterate on a single dataset, as well as to share data across apps and teams.
Nucleus enables team leaders and directors to review the results remotely, in real time, and from any device. For technical directors and visualization specialists, Nucleus is like a wish that has finally come true. It allows them to create advanced and highly developed characters, worlds, and visual effects, immediately see all the changes, and enjoy uninterrupted processes.
Moreover, Omniverse Nucleus can benefit business processes since it improves and shortens the whole lifecycle. Your customers will be able to review the team’s work in real time, enjoy, and approve 3D, realistic, and interactive models it develops.
RTX Renderer
RTX Renderer is a multi-GPU (Multiple-Graphic Processing Units) solution that is fully scalable. It can be used by developers who need to use already-created assets. The solution offers two modes that are easy and frictionless to switch between — real-time ray-traced mode and path-traced mode. The first one is for extremely fast performance, while the second one provides high-end quality.
Connect
This component allows you to use preferred applications in Nvidia Omniverse. It smooths the way for seamless, reliable, real-time, and synchronized workflow between client applications and Omniverse ones. Developers can use connectors to link DCC (digital content creation) tools and asset libraries to the Omniverse platform.
Kit
Developers can use not only connectors and plugins already existing within the Omniverse ecosystem. With a robust Omniverse software development kit, or SDK, they can build their own ones.
Omniverse SDK is a toolkit with a variety of functions that allow developers to build platform-native apps, microservices, and extensions through a set of lightweight plugins. Developers can use combinations of Kit components to build their custom applications or modify the already-existing components as they wish.
The Omniverse SDK can be run headlessly as a microservice or with a UI, which makes applications fully customizable. The main feature of the Kit component is flexibility.
How can technology companies leverage Omniverse opportunities?
Technology companies can use Nvidia Omniverse to develop applications, microservices, and extensions. It is a powerful kit that provides users with a broad-ranging set of development tools.
The Omniverse real-time collaboration option ensures that the same asset can be developed by different people simultaneously and remotely, anywhere in the world. Today, every technology-oriented project can enter the scalable and open-source Omniverse platform. Businesses can collaborate with like-minded designers, developers, and artists to build products and solutions that have never existed before, and yet can be implemented and used in real life.
By utilizing the Nvidia Omniverse, companies open the doors to all advances of Nvidia technology. Omniverse offers us to take part in the development of autonomous machinery and self-driving vehicles, stunning 3D design technologies and engaging simulations, acceleration of AI usage and industrial automation.
Digital Twins
Nvidia Omniverse is literally the platform where AI and the physical world meet. It can be used to create a digital twin of every object, living being, and process.
Digital twins are widely used by automotive enterprises to create the factory of the future (BMW) or self-driving cars. The technology helps forecast weather conditions and fight a wildfire problem by creating a digital twin of our planet and its environment. It can also be used to automate processes and predict the results of solution implementation. The possibilities of digital twin technology are infinite since it benefits any company in nearly all fields and domains.
Nvidia Omniverse allows for the creation of a physically accurate virtual twin and testing it in true-to-life environments and conditions. Powered by AI and synched with real-time data, digital twins can be created as quickly and realistically as ever before.
Robotics
Being fully integrated with Nvidia AI, Omniverse becomes the platform for accelerating robotics development. It fully complies with the laws of physics and is thus able to simulate all materials and substances. Every little particle and mechanism can be inspected and tested.
The fact that real-world environments can be simulated in a virtual world is a breakthrough in the field of robotics. It provides the possibility of training robots and testing their behavior in the real world.
Financial and banking sector
The financial industry today can also benefit from utilizing next-generation technologies. The main one that the financial market is aiming to get control of is AI. The recent partnership statement made by Nvidia and Deutsche Bank only supports this hypothesis.
It was announced that Nvidia and Deutsche Bank had signed a multi-year partnership contract with the idea of rethinking financial operations with AI technology. The use case is really huge and may change the entire landscape of financial services.
Together with Deutsche Bank, Nvidia is accelerating the capabilities of its intelligent avatar technology. Utilizing the opportunities of Nvidia Omniverse, the bank has developed the initial concept of a 3D virtual avatar that is aimed to help employees navigate internal bank systems and answer staff-related questions. In the near future, this technology will be useful to reimagine the bank’s customer experience.
The companies are building a number of applications and large language models to detect fraud operations and improve services in the field of risk management. Nvidia supports Deutsche Bank with cloud transformation, which makes complete sense since cloud migration is a vital step toward obtaining full technological potential.
According to Christian Sewing, CEO of Deutsche Bank, AI and machine learning will change the banking sector tremendously. The bank has already been using AI as part of its internal processes, for example for payment categorization, dynamic pricing, or security issues. This step in the implementation of traditional AI, however, has opened the door to much greater technological opportunities.
The use cases of risk models in HR offered by Nvidia Omniverse, as well as its GPU integration and HPC stack, are able to polish up the existing banking applications and result in the development of brand new areas of applications.
One of the critical issues for the banking sector, as Deutsche Bank says, is data extraction. The risk models help deal with unstructured data. These large language models are made to work with financial texts and allow for the recognition of warning signs in financial transactions at an earlier stage.
In February, Nvidia presented the FinMegatron financial transformer. Today, Deutsche Bank’s researchers are developing FinBERT, a large language model for extracting information from financial text.
Due to the Nvidia software suite, which is called AI Enterprise, and its outstanding computing performance, financial systems can manage risk and calculate a number of scenarios faster. It also allows them to cut down on energy expenditures.
Virtually possible
In today’s world, where everything has already been digitized partially or fully, there are still two technologies that attract everybody’s attention, namely robotics and AI. Nvidia Omniverse addresses both of them.
Nvidia Omniverse has a set of diverse applications that aim to solve various challenges today’s businesses face. One of them is Isaac Sim, which makes it possible to use virtual reality for the sake of the real world.
Isaac
Nvidia Isaac Sim, powered by Omniverse, is an application for robotics simulation that generates synthetic data. Its outstanding features provide the ability to develop, test, and operate AI-based robots by creating physically accurate and close-to-reality environments.
Isaac Sim is a core of Nvidia simulation technology. It simulates materials that are physically accurate and provides real-time ray and path tracing. The application deals with such aspects as manipulation and navigation but can be customized to address other use cases.
One of the key aspects where robotics can dramatically increase the efficiency of enterprises and warehouses is object manipulation. Robots can be trained to recognize, pick up, and move objects. With Omniverse, such tasks are now possible and can be customized for your specific needs. Isaac Sim has an in-built set of tasks robots can fulfill, while these Python-based templates can be modified.
Omniverse system requirements
Omniverse is a new computing platform, and thus, it requires a new computer system. There are three elements to the Omniverse computer. The first one is the RTX computer for creators, designers, and engineers. The second is the OVX servers to host connections to the Nucleus database and run virtual world simulations, including digital twin technology. And finally, the Nvidia GDN, which are like portals into the Omniverse.
How UUUSoftware can help you with Omniverse implementation
Whether you are ready or not, the future is already here. Technologies are constantly evolving, changing our lives and dictating how we do business. Those companies that succeed in keeping up with the latest tech trends use them to their businesses’ benefit. And we are here to help you leverage all of the technological advantages!
At UUUSoftware, we help our customers embrace emerging technologies and reap the benefits of their early adoption. The Nvidia Omniverse platform offers enormous possibilities for technology companies of any scale but is complex to implement as a part of internal operations straight away.
The number of our customers initiates a step-by-step advancement. And their first step on the list is the migration of their infrastructure to the cloud. Our team has over 15 years of experience in the development of cloud-native solutions and providing cloud migration services. If you want to prepare your company for future technologies and utilize their potential, we are always ready to help.