At the recently opened BMW Welt showroom in Munich, prospective buyers have been shown a system that uses the latest 3D visualisation systems to help them configure their dream autobahn muncher.

Using a system developed by Realtime Technology, visitors chan choose trim, colour and wheel options on a touch-screen console and see the results in real time on a 3D image of the car projected on a high-resolution 8 megapixel screen by a Sony SXRD 4K projector.

Processing the massive amount of 3D data requires some serious horsepower. RTT's Powerwall system is a clustering solution using 5 Fujitsu Siemens R40 computers each with 16GB of Ram and an Nvidia Quadro FX5600 graphics card.