FuturePrint Podcast
FuturePrint is dedicated to and passionate about the power of print technology to enable new opportunities and create new value. This pod features deep-dive discussions with the people behind the tech as well as market analysis, trends, marketing and storytelling!
FuturePrint Podcast
#294 - Ulrich Buckenlei: From Gaming Graphics to Industrial Reality – How AI and XR Are Rewiring Manufacturing
In this episode of the FuturePrint Podcast, host Ed speaks with Ulrich Buckenlei, founder of Munich-based Visoric, about how gaming technology, AI and XR are transforming industrial training and manufacturing.
Ulrich explains how his background in military helicopter simulators led to Visoric’s core mission: taking real-time 3D game engines and using them to build photorealistic “serious” simulations of machines, workflows and factories. These digital twins let operators and engineers train, experiment and make mistakes safely – long before they touch a real line.
He shares how Visoric works across screens, tablets, browsers and mixed-reality headsets, and how AI now sits alongside these tools – not as a replacement for experts, but as a power tool that speeds up design, content creation and data processing.
Ulrich gives a behind-the-scenes look at a project with Siemens Power Academy, where browser-based 3D learning environments – and future AI “virtual experts” – are reshaping how technical knowledge is delivered globally.
The conversation also touches on generative design in automotive, the link to industrial print and surface decoration, and why leaders should approach AI with curiosity rather than fear.
A must-listen for anyone interested in AI, XR, industrial print and the future of advanced manufacturing.
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FuturePrint TECH: Industrial Print: 21-22 January '26, Munich, Germany
Welcome to the Future Print Podcast, celebrating print technology and the people behind it.
SPEAKER_02:Hello and welcome back to the FuturePrint Podcast. My name is Ed, and in the next few weeks we'll be chatting to a whole host of people who will be presenting at the AI conference in Munich as part of our FuturePrint Tech, industrial print technology for advanced manufacturing. To start us off, we have Ulrich Beckenleigh. Ulrich, welcome.
SPEAKER_01:Hi, welcome Ed. Thank you for having me here. That's okay.
SPEAKER_02:I'm looking forward to speaking to you. So I'll just ask the first question. I mean, before we get into kind of what your talk is going to be about at the event itself, do you want to just briefly introduce yourself and kind of outline the mission of Visurik or Visurik? As you were telling me before we start recording, it's kind of different to different people. How does uh your work with AI and XR how has it evolved over the past 15 years?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Thank you, Ed. So yeah, my name, as I said, my name is Ulrich, and I'm a uh founder of a company that's placed in Munich, where also the conference started. And what we are doing since 15 years, uh we are we are turning uh gaming technology, so what you know from uh from playing uh uh your your shooter or your your car race, and we're putting that technology into serious uh values for industry. That means uh we are not really playing games in the industry, but we are doing uh simil simulations uh of machines, of workflows. We are predicting something using exactly the technology what you uh you know from from gaming. So we have that real-time 3D part. So uh as you know, computer games have a really good uh output in our days, uh photorealistic more or less, and exactly that for photorealism. We are using uh bringing people to their machines, what they have to work on. And as you know, in industry machines are very expensive. If you do a failure, it's crashed. So we we give uh our um our uh um customers the uh possibility to train safely uh their employees um at the uh at the machines without destroying something and even not destroying their selves. And the good thing is that in our virtual world it looks really light in the reality. So you can you can bring something in a 3D simulator and and uh you take him out, and and then uh then he knows how to do it. And that was when when I was before I was founding the company, I was working in the in the military and space agency field, and we were creating um helicopter simulators because, as you know, every flight minute in the in the air is so expensive that we put it uh the guys, the pilots in that simulator, they were training in in the cockpit, have the real instruments, and afterwards they uh say they jumped into the real helicopter and they saved a lot of time and money.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's brilliant. So so is your work predominantly with goggles or are you using kind of screen-based stuff, or or what kind of thing is it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a brilliant question, because uh that's that's absolutely interesting and and important to understand that what we are what we are doing is the interactive 3D world itself. So that should be a perfect world, and then it's our our expectation, our profession to creating output sources to that world. So if a customer spending a lot of money with us in digitalization their world, it he can afterwards watch it in absolute different on different screens, and uh, and I mean even a mixed reality headset. We do a lot of for mixed reality headset, like the Apple Vision Pro, yet the Apple Vision Pro exactly when it came out in the US, because it's a great device, but not for everyone. Somebody wants to play that game on a screen or on their tablet or on the phone, and that is our expectation that we create something that you can turn out multipler.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so so it's it's really interesting the work you're doing, it's it's fascinating. And how does AI kind of come into play with that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a very good question. And uh, some of my colleagues would say we all because uh be honest, uh the words the buzzwords AI we have for 10 years on our website because even before it gets really big, uh we were working already with AI, but we uh what happened that's that we can really say we all crashed by AI. So that in the beginning, when that started, and we when we to try to create some because we are really professional designers, we're doing for 15 years, we're doing high-quality pictures, and and we of course when AI generated came up, we were trying with that and we were laughing about the the results, what came out, and then it got it gets uh so a huge boost so that we really say, see, the quality is so high that you cannot arrogantly ignore it, even if as an expert doing all the time with the location, you try to ignore it. No, we it's it's a tool, we use it, and uh uh we can save a lot of money, but uh a lot of time and money for the customers, but it means not that AI is steering us, but we are steering AI as a tool. Like we have used Photoshop before, or we still use Photoshop. We have also our AI tools and they help help us and good for our customers to save a lot of time, but we we are still the experts where when we know uh what in what part it works well, what what part it can support, and what part you better do not touch it right now.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. I mean I it's so interesting. When we when we kind of uh approach AI, I think uh a lot of what we're gonna see in the next immediate future, two, three years, is some businesses and companies will lean so heavily on AI that their whole business model will crumble because they haven't actually put into steps or appreciated how you need to work alongside AI rather than just working with AI. Does that kind of make sense to you? I I I was kind of thinking as well when you said customers. I know that you've worked with Siemens, you've worked with BMW. So for you as a company, working, you know, using AI, utilizing AI, how have you done that in that field, you know, or automotive or manufacturing sectors? How have you used it in those fields?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a very, very, very interesting question. Uh and I would say um the use case and and and the user story that's uh that's still our main main focus. Uh so what we're not doing, and other companies do that, we are we we are not uh um synthesizing AI and think, okay, what can we what parts of AI we can sell here now? That's not what we are doing. Uh we want to create uh great stories, great user stories, as you and customer experiences. That's the main thing. And of course, uh time is always rare. So we we try to how can we make the quality better or uh add some features what important to our uh to our customer. But as you as you know, the uh customer uh companies like BMW, Audi, Siemens, that's events that's quite sensitive if you work with them. So uh you you think twice what what you're doing, but uh if we go closer and directly, for example, we do some uh some uh uh right now a project with the Power Academy from Siemens. And uh that's it's very, very interesting because it's a that's it's a it's a learning environment. They are selling knowledge, uh they are selling knowledge uh internally to Siemens and also to customers to train them on power planes and they cooperate with us to bring their learning to an absolutely new level. And what we on and what and what we created, we started with a prototype that's what we are normally doing, and that uh we got so successful with that so that they made they they they say now we have to change our whole business because what you are showing us here that's absolutely a new way to get access to our customers. And what it means directly, we we are using the web browser technology and uh and creating 3D worlds, what you can uh learning worlds, what you can access over the web browser. And uh right now the the um the expert from Siemens is in the middle of all that learning, but the the next steps are what you can do with uh kind of uh AI experts or AI avatars inside of that uh world because um uh if you create a good experience, it's always a mixture of self and guided experience. You want uh because if you create something you okay, I want to be accessible 24 hours, but I mean some experts also sleep sometimes. I sleep to less than that, but you know, in but somebody on a country where they want to accept access the world, no expert is there, and then there could be an AI expert and help them 24 hours, but uh I would uh we are doing that carefully. We mean uh it's it's very important that what it's told, it's it's correct, and that it there is no, I don't know, no nonsense because it's that's a very sensitive and important topic, and we want to keep the quality high. We just do not want to have make a fun things because yes, there are millions of fun things with AI around that's not another is needed. I mean we need real value, and uh but AI gives us a lot of uh uh a lot of possibilities, not only to put it to put information out, it's also it also helps the feedback what's coming from the customer in to work on that. Because I do not know one company who told me we have more time than we need, but all are I mean busy with something, and sometimes really the customer experience is not so good because nobody had enough time to work on the on the value of feedback what he got. And I think there could uh AI perfectly work on to coloralize that, to bring that uh, I mean, to to do a pre-work, what normally takes me hours or days, and then if the pre-work is done, the expert, of course, should be inside. So I I'm not talking about replacing experts, it makes no sense for me. But you the pre-work you can uh do perfectly with AI, and you you also have to check what's coming out if you do not.
SPEAKER_02:I mean yeah, so it's kind of that that process, that industrial process, the the the AI can change, you know, that that can improve. You you spoke to speed it up, yeah. Yeah, speed it up, yeah. So you kind of spoke about the uh um you spoke about customers and kind of what the value to customers is. I mean for us, uh our customers are mainly focused, uh our our delegates at the event will be mainly focused on print. So can you tell me a bit about kind of industrial print obviously increasingly supports that kind of automotive personalization that you've mentioned with BMW, advanced surface decoration, functional integration? How do you see AI influencing these kind of aspects of production and design in the automobile industry? I mean, obviously, we're at Motorworld in January, so uh automobiles will be at the forefront of our mind. How is AI going to be changing that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a brilliant, brilliant question. And uh, I mean, even before that, uh AI got the big buzzwords all around. Um uh generative AI is uh it's a quite old thing in all the construction stuff. I mean, um uh AI is uh it's as you maybe you know, AI is even constructing planes, it it constructs hypercars. That means you give uh you make some some tests with your with your prototype or with your old car real uh car what's it for 10 years, five years on the on the street already. You you you put sensors on that car and you drive over a bumpy road, and then uh the sensors give me some uh uh give me data. What happened with my car when I drive over a bumpy road? That data I uh I can give as a as a food to AI and uh and ask the AI, please generate me a framework for that car what's not influenced so so strong by that bumps on the road. And and then the generative AI starts to create uh the frame and it looks uh if you maybe um I can bring some pictures to my to my speech, but but you say it it will what AI creates there, it it doesn't look like uh normally engineer works at all. It will look like more what what beans do if they create something. So it's a it's a real nature forms, but but they are but they are perfectly, for example, for uh uh admitting that the pumps or that that vibrations. Um it's it's it's uh it's at the right point, and it's hard to for an engineer to jump in there and say, okay, I want to change something there, what AI did, because that's that's quite possible because the the uh the structure is so complex, so that uh that you would all go back to the AI um workflow and would say, okay, we changed some data here and and look what comes out there. So it's a it's it's still a lot of um try and error or uh or testing, or do I like it with my design, or where do I hide that what created? But it's uh it's a very, very interesting and important topic. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, exactly. I love that. I love that line, data is uh a food to AI. It's it's brilliant. Uh I mean I mean, obviously, uh one of the recurring challenges in manufacturing is kind of bridging the gap between those visionary ideas and and kind of the more specific design implementations. So, what what advice would you give as a leader yourself in AI-driven innovation? What advice would you give to uh others in uh in the uh industry who are kind of more resistant to uh to organizational or cultural change? What what advice would you give to them about AI?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, be um be inter uh be interested in all that stuff. Just uh just read about it and uh and and watch it, and uh it maybe you you find something for you what what your business can uh can uh give a great support and and save your time. I want uh can can close with uh with a with an example what I was discussing with with Nvidia guys that is an expert talk uh a few months ago, and you know, um with coming back to that uh gaming world, there is that Nvidia Omniverse, it's a kind of online uh uh online environment. And there you I can also show that linked in the conference, you can you can do uh wind tunnel simulation with a thing. And so you you have an artificial wind source and you put your artificial car or your not artificial but the CRD data of your car in it, and it and it it behaves like a real tunnel. And in these AI created wind simulations, uh there's a it was proof that that you can save months of of work in a normal wind tunnel. And that means not that you uh do not go to the wind tunnel anymore, but that's exactly what I told you before. You you do the pre-work in the in the simulation and then go back. And that means if somebody you to talk about a guy who is not interested in the or resisted of in that uh AI, if you're in the business of doing simulations of wind simulation, and you are not interested or want to avoid AI, you you can miss a lot of opportunities for your business because you could save, you can save maybe millions if you just uh if you just adopt some AI to your business. I would would I'm we're not talking to replace your business with it, but it's it's a tool like we have a screwdriver. So I see the the AI as a as a screwdriver, but uh screwing everything with hand and you have thousands screws, your hand gets very tired and you will have pains.
SPEAKER_02:And so why you have would definitely get uh a little cramped, I expect. So we'll we're we're coming to a close now, but uh over the next few weeks, obviously, I'll be interviewing some more of our uh speakers who will be at the AI conference. And I just want to get a grasp of what they think as experts, as yourself uh as an expert. What do you see in the next three to five years will be the next kind of innovation within AI? What's going to be the most important thing? What's gonna change the most in the next three to five years, is it, you know, genitive, generative design, predictive simulation? What what what are you expecting to see?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I uh I I I first think uh much much more showcases. Um possibilities, what companies bringing out very very fast, um, because uh AI is speeding up the process the process. If I need before four years to bring a software out, you can do it in some weeks, even create the website on a half a day, and there's a website, so it we will see much more that will be a little bit confusing, but but what I think is that the the field of robotics and and the the generative AI will come much closer. That means uh we will have influencing of the AI cases to the robots, so we will have uh advantage in robots too. Uh when I was reading uh uh uh driving home to my parents, and I was reading my comic or my information brochures from the 80s, and there was something written like human uh robots are running around. And when I was reading that in the 80s, I said, no, that never will come. And even uh five years, ten years ago, I would have said that will never come in that way who was who it was written in that uh in that picture book. But now with that chat AI and the possibility to train that robot so fast, I now believe yes, they were maybe 100% right was written there. And that shocked me quite a lot.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean it's uh it's just it's a a strange uh otherworldly thought to think that maybe in the next five to ten years we'll be having robots running around outside. Yeah. But you never know. Thank you very much, Eric. Um, we're gonna really look forward to your uh talk at the uh conference. I think it's gonna be a fascinating day. And uh and obviously you're gonna be bringing something just uh a little bit different to kind of what we might usually see at the future print events in in terms of uh kind of just outside of the uh uh of the kind of sphere that we're in. Uh I just want to say a final thank you very much to you, Ulric, uh, and uh we'll hope to see you uh soon.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, and I'm looking forward very much to the audience. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you, goodbye.
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