The future of Bern station with VR

VR is also opening up new ways for SBB to make the railway stations of the future more customer-friendly. The planners of the future Bern railway station used the new technology for visualisation.

What will Bern's railway station look like in eight years' time? With the latest VR application from SBB, it is possible to marvel at the spaces planned today from the customer's perspective. You can find out and see more in the YouTube clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvYc_OHwrVQ&feature=youtu.be

SBB's VR application was used for the planning: With VR, the architects and planners were able to explore what the station would look like for people in wheelchairs, for children or for the visually impaired. Depending on requirements, it became visible whether display panels needed to be rotated or clocks repositioned. "This opens up new ways to make the station more customer-friendly," says SBB media spokesperson Christian Ginsig. "Not only that, it also saves costs. This is because we can see in advance whether elements need to be rearranged instead of having to discover and move them after installation." In reality, the subsequent relocation of a ticket machine, for example, would cost an incredible tens of thousands of francs. In VR, this can be done practically in the blink of an eye. Furthermore, it was also possible to simulate commuter flows with VR and see that ticket machines had to be placed differently because the queue in front of the machines was in the way of people passing by.