Autodesk VRED

Autodesk VRED
Information
Type	3D visualization and virtual prototyping software
Industry	Automotive design, product design
Developer	Autodesk (originally PI-VR GmbH)
Operating System	Windows; Linux (VRED Core and VRED Render Node)
License	Proprietary, subscription
Supported Devices	OpenXR headsets (SteamVR, Oculus, Varjo Base and Vive Console runtimes), OpenVR headsets, Varjo headsets, Apple Vision Pro (streamed)
Website	https://www.autodesk.com/products/vred/overview

Autodesk VRED is a 3D visualization and virtual prototyping application from Autodesk, used mainly in automotive design to turn CAD and design data into photorealistic images, animations and real-time presentations. Autodesk describes its output as content that can be viewed on the desktop, in full-scale presentation environments, through virtual reality and mixed reality headsets, or streamed to web and mobile displays. It was developed by the German company PI-VR GmbH, whose documentation expanded the name as "VRED - Virtual Reality Editor"; Autodesk acquired PI-VR in January 2013.

VRED supports headsets through OpenXR, OpenVR and a native Varjo mode, has a built-in multi-user collaboration tool for desktop and headset users, and since 2026 can stream to Apple Vision Pro through a companion app built with Innoactive and NVIDIA CloudXR. The current major release is VRED 2027, announced in April 2026, followed by the VRED 2027.1 update in August 2026.

Reviewed 27 September 2026. Checked the 2013 acquisition, PI-VR company details, product lineup, Varjo, OpenXR and collaboration features, Apple Vision Pro app, VRED 2027 and 2027.1 changes and customer claims against the cited Autodesk, Varjo and press sources. About review dates.

History

PI-VR

VRED was created by PI-VR GmbH, a German developer of high-end VR and 3D visualization software. In January 2013 the company's legal notice listed offices in Darmstadt and Berlin, registration in the Darmstadt commercial register, and Matthias Stiller, Andreas Zieringer and Osman Dumbuya as managing directors. The company's profile described its work as combining knowledge of CAD data processes and engineering with 3D visualization and software development for the VR industry. Shortly before the acquisition, PI-VR sold the product line as VRED Essentials, VRED Photo and VRED Professional, alongside a server product called VServeR, and its news page listed 6.06 service releases for the three VRED editions.

Acquisition by Autodesk

Autodesk completed its acquisition of the privately held PI-VR in January 2013; terms were not disclosed. Buzz Kross, then Autodesk's senior vice president for design, lifecycle and simulation, said that VRED "reduces the need for physical prototypes through the use of real time, highly realistic visualization." Autodesk said it would integrate Autodesk technologies into the PI-VR platform while continuing to sell, support and enhance the PI-VR product line. VRED joined Autodesk's existing automotive tools, which the announcement listed as Autodesk Showcase, Alias, Maya, 3ds Max and the Autodesk Design and Creation Suites.

VR headset support

In February 2019, Varjo announced that its Varjo VR-1 headset supported Autodesk VRED. VRED product manager Lukas Fäth said in the announcement that combining the headset's resolution with VRED rendering would let joint customers "experience and evaluate virtual prototypes with an unprecedented level of detail and realism." The VRED 2019.2 documentation described a built-in collaboration tool that let participants join a shared session from a desktop or a head-mounted display. At that time only the HTC Vive and Oculus headsets were supported for the tool's shared VR room configuration.

VRED 2023.4 added OpenXR support. Autodesk explained that it was adding the standard "due to more HMDs adapting OpenXR." The first implementation covered tethered and untethered VR devices, controller input and hand tracking. Eye tracking, AR over OpenXR, Vive Tracker support, Python control of controller interaction, and Varjo-specific features such as foveated rendering, marker tracking, quad view and depth testing were still missing.

VRED 2025.1 officially added support for the Varjo XR-4. Autodesk's announcement listed depth occlusion (so real hands can interact with virtual designs in mixed reality), hand tracking, Varjo markers for anchoring virtual objects, eye-tracked foveated rendering and eye tracking data as features of the combination.

Apple Vision Pro

On 17 March 2026, at NVIDIA GTC, Autodesk announced Immersive for Autodesk VRED, an Apple Vision Pro app developed by Autodesk with Innoactive and built on NVIDIA CloudXR 6.0, with Apple and NVIDIA also involved in the project. The app was scheduled to arrive with visionOS 26.4. VRED itself keeps running on a Windows or Linux workstation or cloud PC, and the headset view is streamed in real time with foveated streaming, which puts the most video quality where the wearer is looking. UploadVR reported that the mode supports several co-located Vision Pro users and 3D annotation in the shared space. Autodesk announced on 20 May 2026 that the app was available on the App Store for Apple Vision Pro.

Products

Autodesk sells VRED as several separate products. The 2023 product page described four of them as follows.

Product	Purpose (per Autodesk)	Source
VRED Design	Review and evaluate automotive design ideas in real time
VRED Professional	Create high-end visualizations and virtual prototypes
VRED Core	Render and stream 3D data on demand
VRED Presenter	Present product configurations in an interactive 3D environment
VRED Render Node	Rendering node for cluster rendering, which shares the rendering of a scene between several networked computers

Autodesk also offers a non-commercial Learning Edition. In cluster rendering, VRED transfers the scene graph over the network to each computer, splits the image into tiles, and composes the final image on the host; hosts that are not needed can be disabled to avoid checking out unneeded render node licenses. The 2025.3 release notes give NVIDIA driver requirements for both Windows and Linux, name Linux dependencies for VRED Core and VRED Render Node, and state that the release added support for Red Hat Linux 9 and dropped Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

XR features

Headset modes

VRED can drive a headset in three display modes: OpenXR HMD, OpenVR HMD and a dedicated Varjo HMD mode. Since VRED 2025.1 a toolbar button switches between the desktop view and the selected headset mode. For OpenXR, Autodesk documents runtime setup for SteamVR, the Oculus app, Varjo Base and Vive Console. VRED does not support the Windows Mixed Reality runtime directly, so Windows Mixed Reality headsets have to run through SteamVR.

VRED 2025.1 also made several OpenXR changes:

• a generic fallback controller model for controllers VRED does not yet support
• controller haptic feedback, exposed to Python scripts
• in mixed reality, an option to draw tracked virtual hands over the user's real hands to help with menu selection
• Varjo marker tracking in OpenXR mode
• support for the Varjo XR-4, with the Ultraleap extension enabled for hand tracking
• Python commands to turn detection of individual hand gestures on or off, so that users do not accidentally trigger interactions such as the VR menu, pointer or teleport

Collaboration

The collaboration tool puts desktop and headset users in the same session. When a participant triggers an action such as switching a variant set or playing an animation, VRED sends only that change to the other participants rather than the whole scene, and the VRED Cluster Service works as the exchange server. Headset users who share the same real-world space must enter exactly the same room name, which lets VRED show each participant's position as a "safety twin" to help avoid collisions. VRED 2027 added personalized avatars for distributed sessions. The 2027.1 update added detachable XR menu panels (Variant Sets, Viewpoints, Collaboration and Tools), a "Gather All" command that brings participants to one position, and support for custom XR tools written in Python.

Cloud and streaming

In January 2022, Varjo said that Rivian was among the first customers with early access to Varjo Reality Cloud, which it used for automotive design reviews in VRED. Rivian teams could view high-resolution car models without downloading files or installing software locally, and Varjo stated that its foveated transport algorithm reduced the streaming bandwidth to 35 megabits per second. The Apple Vision Pro app uses a similar approach: NVIDIA CloudXR lets RTX-powered systems render VRED and stream it to the headset with foveation.

Release history

Release	XR-relevant changes	Source
VRED 2019.2	Built-in collaboration tool for desktop and HMD users
VRED 2023.4	First OpenXR integration: controllers, hand tracking, custom controller bindings
VRED 2025.1	Official Varjo XR-4 support (announced by Autodesk in July 2024); OpenXR haptics; MR hand overlay; Varjo marker tracking in OpenXR; desktop/XR toolbar toggle
VRED 2027 (April 2026)	Redesigned one-handed XR menu, personalized avatars, physics editor, Gaussian splat and point cloud (PLY) import, one-click VR/XR session launch from Alias
VRED 2027.1 (August 2026)	Detachable XR menu panels, "Gather All", Python custom XR tools, Variant Sets 2.0 in XR

VRED 2027

Autodesk published the VRED 2027 feature list on 16 April 2026. Alias users can launch a VRED Presenter VR session or a full VRED XR session with one click, without VRED expertise. The release also added a physics editor for real-time rigid body simulation, five 3D library environments (Bridge, Desert, Minimal, Parking Deck and Villa) optimized for the Vulkan renderer, and support for 3D Gaussian splats and point clouds in PLY format, rendered with Vulkan and GPU ray tracing. DEVELOP3D described the release as one that reduces friction between surfacing in Alias and review in VRED, and noted that the physics interaction works on the desktop and in XR.

VRED 2027.1, presented by Autodesk on 7 August 2026, rewrote variant management as Variant Sets 2.0. It also added thin-film interference for several material types, Shader Execution Reordering for GPU ray tracing, and multi-bounce indirect illumination in the Vulkan pipeline.

Users

Autodesk's 2023 product page quoted executives from Nissan, Siemens and Kia about VR design collaboration. Gregory Guillaume, vice president of design at Kia Europe, said VR collaboration let the design team and executives in Korea "be in the virtual world, walking around models." According to NVIDIA, as reported by UploadVR, Kia, BMW, Volvo and Rivian were already using the Apple Vision Pro streaming mode in March 2026. 9to5Mac listed BMW Group, Kia, Rivian and Volvo Group among the companies whose designers would use the app.

See also

• Varjo
• OpenXR
• Apple Vision Pro
• Digital twin