Cross your fingers for that public defender’s skills Re/Cappers, today’s lead story is off to the courtroom, where reality capture and VR recreations & walkthroughs are repeat offenders of remarkable innovation.
They’re proving impactful neither from a “Wow!” factor, nor serving as a break from the mundane; but because of how they ignite our senses, giving judge & juries alike experiences instead of mere accounts.
Just like Morton Heilig knew in 1962, when he developed the Sensorama - a premier too-early-for-its time business saga.
So Heilig is a cinematographer and inventor in 1955, envisioning a revolutionary entertainment he labeled “Cinema of the Future”. From the first published paper that year, in which he dubbed it “experience theater”, it took him seven years and inventing his own 3D camera for its final patented iteration. In 1962, the world had the Sensorama…even if it wasn’t ready for it.
The device, which at its time probably dwarfed many NBA players, featured:
A practitioner at heart, Heilig shot and edited numerous experiences, including a Brooklyn motorcycle ride, a belly dance, a dune buggy excursion, and, well, being a Coca-Cola bottle.
Heilig envisioned applications galore for his brainchild: pilot training, vacation marketing, car test drives, or as a coin-operated amusement. An investor had connected him with industry executives, helping the Sensorama appear at Universal Studios, Santa Monica pier, and Times Square. The device promised "3-D, Wide Vision, Stereo Sound, Aromas, Wind, Vibrations," and thousands likely experienced its simulated environment during its national tour. However, with high costs came no major investment, and Heilig's sensory machine ultimately faded into obscurity.
In a 1984 interview, Heilig proudly noted that even three decades later, nothing matched Sensorama's experience. Before his death in 1997, VR began emerging. Having consulted for Disney, Heilig is suspected to have sparked their interest in 3D technology. Though these systems primarily delivered thrills, Heilig had envisioned loftier goals, telling the Saturday Evening Post in 1964: "It's an empathy machine, and if we can develop it right, maybe we can get it to inject feelings of warmth and love."
It’s absolutely being developed right, Morton. And it’s not just injecting feelings - it’s now helping deliver verdicts and justice, relying heavily on transportation just as you did. More on that, coming up.
What’s Cappenin’ This Week
Pathos is the appeal to emotion, and one of the three rhetorical appeals alongside ethos and logos. In a courtroom, the latter two are integral to judge & jury persuasion, but pathos is the gold standard. And in Las Vegas of all places, it’s surging in popularity for personal injury cases, thanks to the immersive storytelling provided by 3D technology and drone imaging.
As detailed in Tech Times, Sin City law firms are increasingly collaborating with digital modeling teams who use real road measurements, surveillance footage, and client testimony to build photorealistic 3D reconstructions, which often prove decisive in trials where conventional evidence is ambiguous.
Now EVERYONE can be placed at the scene of a crime! Image credit Vice
Jurors can now don VR headsets to virtually stroll through crash scenes, experiencing the event from the client’s perspective - which personal injury lawyers say brings unparalleled clarity and emotional impact compared to traditional photos or diagrams.
LiDAR and photogrammetry create 3D models of crash sites, vehicles, and even injuries that are more accurate than a card counter on nine hours’ sleep. Drones provide essential aerial perspectives, from high-res imagery and GPS tracking to thermal cameras, helping juries better understand traffic patterns and environmental context.
Finally, once the data is gathered, the rendering into courtroom-ready exhibits begins, which means the roles of Unreal Engine and Unity do too; this has led to an uptick in game developer hiring from Vegas firms.
Link below to the royal flush of an exposé on admissibility and legal considerations, metadata documentation, the psychology of emotional connection, tech in Vegas law schools, and the future of digital courtrooms.
As Yoda might say, “The future, Airbus sees.”
What if the future of aerospace wasn’t just about building planes, but about creating entire virtual worlds where aircraft live, breathe, and evolve before a single bolt is tightened?
Airbus, the European aircraft juggernaut, is doing just that, weaponizing digital twins to obliterate traditional limits in design, manufacturing, and operations.
Airbus’ Skywise data platform and its lounge of benefits. Image credit Airbus via Harvard Business School
The need for costly physical prototypes has departed, while precise optimization of industrial tools and assembly lines has landed, such as the planning of the A321 assembly line and the creation of “heads of” versions for the A320 family. In manufacturing, their twins simulate tools, robots, workflows, and supply chains to make their efficiency supersonic and their paperwork resemble a cocktail napkin.
Airbus highlights several of their plants’ successes in a brand new press release: a Gearbox manufacturing line, monitoring of speed, pressure, temperature, and humidity, maintenance anticipation, the Skywise platform and sensor data feeds, component life extension, and the aerospacer’s “build twice” philosophy. So, good call Yoda.
Croom, Maryland, 1941. The Columbia Air Center broke through America's segregated skies as the first Black-owned airfield, where African American pilots claimed their rightful place in aviation history despite Jim Crow's barriers.
Now, 84 years later, its legacy has become enriched thanks to the photogrammetric preservation of artifacts, fragments, equipment, and flightwear by one University of Maryland undergrad.
University of Maryland’s Hana Lerdboon, with that mid-capture glee we all know. Image credit College Park Aviation Museum
For Hana Lerdboon and the hundreds of historic objects she’s captured, it’s all about ease of public access. “Adding this level of interactivity is really important - people like to experience things in their own way. Being able to manipulate the models lets each person explore and connect with the object differently.”
It’s a fortunate confluence of efforts, as Lerdboon’s skills were recognized by a director of a visual culture lab, who happened to know the innovation ambitions of the College Park Aviation Museum. Those aspirations will soon be a reality, as the museum will feature 3D interaction for the first time thanks to Lerdboon’s grand ‘grammin. It’s a great achievement with perhaps a greater story - one that started with the modeling of an ancient Greek jar - which the university rightly champions below.
You know a device is a big deal, when said device is the name of an organization.
As in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, headquartered in France. And whoa nelly is ITER ITERating on their profoundly distinct construction site. Any rework in and around facilities like these gets exponentially pricier, making the cost-cutting the premier benefit thus far. So what exactly ARe they up to?
As-built analysis is as-important as-it gets on nuclear sites. Image credit ITER
Using the Gamma AR application, engineers and technicians can now overlay as-designed 3D models onto the as-built environment using tablets and smartphones. This allows them to immediately compare installed components with their digital blueprints, spot discrepancies, detail the problem, and assign corresponding tasks to staff in real time. “It could take months to spot an error without the application,” says Lucas Scherrer, Building Integration Manager in the Integration and CAD Support Section. “With the new AR capability, you see it in minutes.”
The system uses “ruggedized” tablets optimized for Apple hardware, leveraging LiDAR for precise alignment of digital models with physical structures. The two alignment methods are direct LiDAR scanning and a QR code system for easier model placement.
ITER details the monumental progress below, discussing Navisworks and LiDAR scans, IKEA comparisons, collaboration with the surveillance and field design teams, time-to-repair, and how visitors can enjoy the immersion.
An 1809 depiction of the deadliest bridge collapse in history, Ponte das Barcas in Portugal. Image credit Wikipedia Commons via WorldAtlas
In the annals of tragic infrastructure fails, the Ponte das Barcas collapse earns a grim place not just for its structural failure - but for the chaos it trapped beneath its trusses.
Let’s rewind to March 29, 1809, in Porto, Portugal. The Napoleonic Wars were raging, and Marshal Soult’s French forces were bearing down on the city. As panic spread like wildfire, thousands of civilians scrambled to flee across the Douro River via the Ponte das Barcas - a floating pontoon bridge made of 20 boats linked together by steel cables. Its guerrilla nature made it ingenious. But it was also temporary, and thus, woefully underbuilt for a stampede of thousands.
Under the weight of the fleeing masses, the bridge heaved, cracked, and finally snapped. The exact number of casualties remains uncertain, though 4,000 is a widely accepted approximate tally.
The Ponte das Barcas’ modular barge design, while flexible and adaptable for military and commercial use, lacked the redundancy and stability needed for mass evacuation. Worse, there were no load limits, no emergency plans, and no oversight. It was a bridge in name only.
To be fair, this wasn’t a peacetime engineering oversight. But it was a classic case of infrastructure completely out of sync with potential use scenarios. In other words: no one stress-tested the bridge for panic and a deluge of near-instant foot traffic; a disturbing, unfortunate norm even in 2025.
What doomed the Ponte das Barcas wasn’t just a lack of foresight - it was a lack of data. Today, we’d approach even a temporary bridge with a full digital toolkit. Think precise capture of each barge, modeling buoyancy and stress under dynamic loading. Photogrammetry from drones could’ve mapped the exact fit and condition of the planking system, highlighting weaknesses in the joints and lashings.
A digital twin, even of a floating structure, could simulate live load scenarios, showing what happens when thousands of people move across it in panic. Designers might have added redundant pontoon sections, redistributed support chains, or used tension monitoring systems to anticipate strain in real time. How about robots? Wouldn’t ya know - The Re/Cap even covered a recent robotic bridge inspection system.
The Ponte das Barcas was a failure of understanding how infrastructure behaves under pressure. If engineers had the tools we do now, they might have realized that this bridge wasn’t just floating, it was flirting with disaster. Today, reality capture lets us interrogate our infrastructure before catastrophe strikes. Because even the most temporary bridge deserves assiduous scrutiny.
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