INTERACT 2026.2: Bringing Mixed Reality to Industrial Simulation and Introducing Wire-Based Lifting Simulation
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
With INTERACT 2026.2, immersive engineering becomes even more practical for everyday industrial use.
This release introduces two major capabilities, built to address common challenges in industrial reviews and process validation:
Mixed Reality, through headset passthrough
A brand-new Wire module to simulate lifting operations and hoist systems
Alongside these flagship features, INTERACT 2026.2 also delivers a wide range of improvements to VR interactions, editor workflows, performance, and overall stability.
Mixed Reality: blending the digital twin with the real world
Virtual Reality allows engineers to fully immerse themselves inside a digital twin. However, there are many situations where completely isolating users from their physical surroundings is not the ideal experience.
During collaborative design reviews, users often need to communicate with colleagues, locate physical equipment, or simply stay aware of their environment.
INTERACT 2026.2 introduces Mixed Reality through passthrough technology, allowing supported headsets to display the real world while seamlessly overlaying the virtual simulation.
The feature is available on the HTC Vive Focus series and Varjo XR headsets. While not officially supported, Apple Vision Pro can also be used through the ALVR middleware.
Activating passthrough is straightforward. Users can enable or disable the feature directly from the VR hand menu during a session, without interrupting their workflow.
To provide a natural experience, navigation automatically adapts when passthrough is enabled. Teleportation is disabled, and movement controls are adjusted to better match the mixed reality experience.
The result is a workflow that combines the benefits of immersive simulation with the comfort and awareness of the real world.
Simulating lifting operations with the new Wire module
Industrial lifting operations involve complex interactions between suspended loads, cables, cranes, hoists, and surrounding equipment: scenarios that were, until now, difficult to reproduce accurately inside INTERACT.
Version 2026.2 changes that with a completely new Wire module, letting users simulate cable behavior for lifting operations and hoist systems, powered by INTERACT's high-fidelity physics engine.
Whether you're validating a maintenance procedure, studying accessibility, or reviewing an assembly process, you can now simulate realistic cable behavior while manipulating suspended loads.
The simulation runs on the XDE physics engine, so wires naturally react to gravity, object movement, and physical constraints — providing realistic behavior throughout the operation.
This opens the door to a range of new industrial applications, including:
crane operation planning
maintenance procedure validation
lifting equipment studies
assembly process simulation
operator training
Improved VR interactions
Following the major VR overhaul introduced in INTERACT 2026.1, this release further refines the immersive experience.
The VR hand menu is now available independently on both hands, allowing users to access tools more naturally regardless of which hand is currently interacting with the scene.
Hand tracking has also been improved with more reliable gesture detection and better ray alignment, while menu buttons now fully support direct touch interactions.
Additional improvements include a grab reticle for better targeting, refined grab ray rendering, and globally tuned haptic feedback. Vibrations are now more subtle, easier to distinguish, and fully configurable through the player settings.
Together, these improvements create a more comfortable and intuitive VR workflow for both experienced users and newcomers.
Improving everyday workflows
INTERACT 2026.2 also focuses on making daily engineering tasks smoother.
Several editor tools have been enhanced, including improvements to Pick Axis manipulation, multi-threaded shape detection analysis, and environment management directly from the editor.
Project configuration has also been simplified with a unified Add / Change Player workflow and project-level Ambient Occlusion settings.
For ergonomics studies, puppet management has been expanded, allowing users to remove or reset the current puppet directly from the VR interface or through the public API.
Although these changes may appear incremental individually, together they significantly improve day-to-day productivity.
More performance, more stability
As with every INTERACT release, a large part of our work has focused on quality and reliability.
INTERACT 2026.2 includes dozens of fixes across the editor, VR interactions, physics, licensing, build generation, point clouds, and cable simulation.
Performance has also been improved through memory optimizations, reduced garbage collection allocations, faster hierarchy management, and multi-threaded processing in several editor operations.
These improvements make the platform more robust for large industrial projects while ensuring a smoother user experience.
Continuing to expand industrial digital twin capabilities
Every INTERACT release is guided by the same objective: making advanced industrial simulation easier to deploy and easier to use.
With version 2026.2, Mixed Reality improves collaboration during immersive reviews, while the new Wire module extends the range of industrial processes that can be simulated with high-fidelity physics.
Combined with numerous workflow refinements and stability improvements, these additions make INTERACT an even more powerful platform for engineering validation, operator training, and industrial digital twins.
We look forward to seeing what our users will build with these new capabilities.
Discover the complete release notes in our documentation : https://documentation.ls-group.fr/interact/changelog
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