This spring we partnered with Oxford’s X-Reality Hub to co-organise and deliver this year’s edition of the annual showcase of immersive technology research at Oxford. The Immers-eXpo 2025: Innovating at the Edge of Reality, held at Jesus College’s Digital Hub, Oxford on 5 June 2025, brought together students, researchers, industry partners, and the public to explore how XR (mixed reality technologies) and AI (artificial intelligence) intersect across fields. The event featured lightning talks spanning topics from cultural heritage to engineering, science, medicine, education and the humanities, hands-on demonstrations, and a networking session.

As part of the event, our team delivered the talk “3D Scans of Ship Models as a Source for the History of Navigation.” This showcased our novel methodology for tracing innovation in ship design during the Age of Sail, in particular transforming 3D scans of ship models into watertight digital hulls and applying computational fluid dynamics to compare hydrodynamic performance over time. The presentation focused on the pipeline we have developed—from geometry preparation through meshing and simulation—and how this approach opens new avenues for evaluating ship design and performance with greater precision. We are grateful to our collaborators at the Oxford X-Reality Hub and the Jesus College Digital Hub, and to all who attended, for contributing to the success of this event.

More information about the event can be found here: https://oxr.eng.ox.ac.uk/blog/expo_25_announce/