In a Lower Hutt workshop, a spherical machine flips a person fully upside down while a VR headset convinces their brain they are somewhere else entirely: piloting an aircraft, controlling heavy machinery or reversing a loaded vehicle onto a landing craft in a rolling sea.
The machine is called NOVA, and its maker, Eight360, is a Wellington deep-tech company that has spent around 11 years developing it.
NOVA combines virtual reality with a fully untethered cockpit that can rotate continuously through 360 degrees. Instead of simply showing someone what a vehicle might do, it lets them feel the movement, orientation and forces involved.
Compact enough to move by truck or shipping container, it takes serious training to the people and places where it is needed.
“We can put you inside another world and make it actually feel like you’re there,” says Eight360 founder and CEO Terry Miller.
A crazy idea that actually worked
Eight360 began with a question:
I wonder if this will actually work?
The team could see where virtual reality was heading when Oculus was still little more than a prototype development kit. Rather than wait for the technology to mature, they began designing a physical simulator around it - solving the movement, control and engineering problems so they would be ready when the headsets arrived.
Early versions were developed in what Terry describes as a “leaky garage in Petone”.
The idea was ambitious: build a compact simulator that could move freely through every axis without being fixed to a large external frame. It needed to know exactly where it was, respond quickly enough to match the virtual world and remain safe while rotating a person fully upside down.
There was no existing roadmap.
“The NOVA design presents some unique challenges and gnarly engineering problems,” the company says. “But it’s such an amazing feeling when your crazy idea actually works.”
That experimental garage project became Eight360’s flagship product — and a platform now used for applications the original team could not have predicted when they started.
Feel the forces, not just the picture
The difference between NOVA and a conventional simulator becomes most important when the stakes are high.
Eight360 has worked with the New Zealand Defence Force on off-road vehicle handling, rollover prevention and other specialised manoeuvres that are hazardous, costly or impossible to rehearse repeatedly in the real world.
One scenario involves transferring vehicles from a larger ship onto a landing craft while at sea, for amphibious landing operations.
“There is no way they can practise that on land,” Terry says. “There’s no way to simulate the sea state and what’s going on in that environment.”
To recreate a specialised vehicle, Eight360 can scan the real machine, rebuild it digitally and model everything from the suspension and engine behaviour to the controls used by its operator. The trainee is then placed inside a simulated environment designed around the task they need to master.
NOVA allows them to rehearse the manoeuvre, make mistakes and repeat the scenario without putting people or operational vehicles through every failed attempt.
“You’re trying to take a vehicle to its tipping point, and if you get it wrong in real life it costs you a new vehicle,” says Lead Mechanical Engineer Duncan Henderson. “In the NOVA, we just roll over a few times and carry on.”
One machine, endless worlds
NOVA is not tied to one vehicle or one use case.
It is a development platform. Controls, software and virtual environments can be adapted to simulate off-road trucks, mining machinery, forestry equipment, aircraft, lunar vehicles and spacecraft.
For specialised projects, Eight360 works backwards from the real-world experience. What does the operator see? How does the vehicle move? What do the controls feel like? What happens when the terrain shifts, the machine tips or a manoeuvre goes wrong?
That flexibility has taken NOVA beyond defence and heavy machinery into university teaching and human-performance research.
At Texas A&M, the platform has been used within research exploring human spaceflight simulation, including lunar-vehicle operation, capsule docking and moon-landing scenarios.
At the University of Sydney, engineering students can load their own aircraft and control-system designs into NOVA and experience how those designs feel. They are not simply testing whether the mathematics works on screen. They can experience the vehicle as a person would.
Other research described by Eight360 explores how immersive space environments affect human perception — including why astronauts may struggle to eat enough in space.
“We’re working with astronauts — crazy opportunities we never expected when we started,” Terry says.
Building something world-unique, more than once
Inventing NOVA was one challenge.
Learning how to build it repeatedly is another.
The simulator brings together a complex mix of mechanical structures, electronics, sensors, controls, embedded systems, software and custom-manufactured components. Its design has also continued to evolve, meaning improvements must be tracked through drawings, parts lists, manufacturing instructions and supply-chain decisions.
“Getting our systems and documentation in order has been a major undertaking,” the company says. “It can feel like it slows us down when the design is going to change again, but it is an investment in our future success.”
That discipline is what turns an extraordinary prototype into a product that can be manufactured, exported and supported.
Eight360 also relies on specialist New Zealand suppliers for unusual custom components with demanding tolerances. The relationship goes beyond sending out a drawing and waiting for a part to return.
Its engineers visit manufacturing facilities, learn what the supplier’s machinery can do and collaborate on better specifications, production methods, jigs and fixtures.
The result is not simply one company’s capability.
It is a wider Hutt Valley and New Zealand manufacturing ecosystem learning how to build deep technology together.
One of every kind of engineer
NOVA takes almost every engineering discipline to build, and Eight360’s team reflects that.
There are mechanical and production engineers, mechatronics specialists, electrical engineers, electronics and embedded-systems capability, software developers and the deeper mathematics and physics required to make the machine move exactly as intended.
Because the problems are unusual, the company cannot always hire someone who already knows how to solve them.
Instead, it often brings in graduates and early-career engineers, then gives them the support and exposure to become experts.
“We make sure every new project or problem is worked on collaboratively with the whole team,” Eight360 explains. “Each of us sees the problem from a different angle, and someone else might come up with a clever idea the specialist hasn’t thought of.”
That willingness to share knowledge matters in a small team. The mechanical design affects the controls. The software relies on accurate sensing. A manufacturing decision can change the way the entire product performs.
No discipline works alone.
Two very different roads into engineering
Duncan Henderson is proof there is no single way into advanced manufacturing.
He did not achieve NCEA Level 2. After leaving school, he studied auto-electrical and diesel trades before beginning an apprenticeship working on buses.
That led to automotive research involving biofuels, then motorsport, where he built engines and race cars. Eventually, he reached the limit of what he felt he could teach himself and chose to complete a mechanical engineering degree.
By then, he was not learning theory in the abstract. He was connecting it to machines, materials and failures he had already experienced with his own hands.
“The degree doesn’t teach you everything you need to know,” Duncan says. “It teaches you how to learn what you need to know.”
His practical background became an advantage, not a detour.
“You don’t have to go and get a degree straight away,” he says. “When I finally did study, I had a much deeper understanding because I already knew the practical side.”
R&D Engineer Dhanika Ratnayake came through a more theory-led pathway, completing a PhD in mobile robotics before applying that knowledge to NOVA’s sensing, control and VR-tracking systems.
The machine needs to know where it is at every moment and control its orientation precisely. His work sits inside that invisible layer — the mathematics and software that make the physical experience possible.
“New Zealand is a bit underestimated,” Dhanika says. “But New Zealand does have this technology, and the world needs to be aware of that.”
For him, the attraction is the challenge.
“In engineering, the problems aren’t the same every day,” he says. “You get to challenge yourself, and that keeps it exciting.”
Made in the Hutt, built with New Zealand capability
Eight360 is not an isolated success.
It sits inside a Hutt Valley cluster where advanced fabrication, digital systems, superconductors, fusion technology and space-related engineering are becoming export businesses.
Terry believes the common thread is a particular New Zealand way of approaching hard problems.
“New Zealand has this really special mindset,” he says. “It’s not, ‘Here’s the proper way to do this.’ It’s, ‘I’m going to work out a better way to do it’”
Eight360’s own journey is proof.
A simulator that began in a leaking Petone garage is now exported internationally and used in environments its founders could not have imagined when they started.
“It’s really amazing being able to start a company in a leaky garage in Petone and end up on the world stage with a product like this,” Terry says.
Why it matters for New Zealand
Every NOVA sold overseas brings export revenue home and supports skilled jobs in Wellington.
It also supports the local manufacturers producing the specialised parts Eight360 needs, building capability beyond the company’s own workshop.
The benefits extend to how the technology is used.
Simulation does not remove the need for real-world training, but it can reduce the number of repetitions that require fuel, vehicle hours, travel and exposure to hazardous conditions. It allows rare or dangerous scenarios to be practised repeatedly while reducing wear on expensive equipment.
For safety-critical industries, accessibility matters.
The Eight360 team believes NOVA has the potential to do more than save time and money. By allowing people to practise difficult situations before they face them for real, it could help prevent serious accidents - and, ultimately, save lives.
Looking ahead
Simulation training is growing internationally, and Eight360 wants to deepen its presence in serious training while continuing to improve the NOVA platform and the systems required to manufacture it at scale.
For the engineering team, growth would mean more capability, more production infrastructure and access to new tools and processes.
But the purpose remains human.
“As engineers, we like solving problems,” the company says. “But at the core, it’s always about people.”
Terry’s advice to anyone considering a future in advanced manufacturing comes directly from Eight360’s own journey:
“Just jump in. You can’t be taught how to do something that doesn’t exist yet, and the first version doesn’t have to be perfect.”
Make your move. Make your mark.
Your future’s calling - and it might be inside a machine that turns the world upside down.
Built in the Hutt. Made to take people somewhere else entirely.
Because the first step in creating something that has never existed is deciding to start.
