A Combination of Augmented Reality and Google Earth’s facilities for urban planning in idea stage

Abstract

This article presents a study on Augmented Reality (AR) development as a new performance approach for collaborative space of urban design work. Here, the participantse.g. architects, structure engineers, equipment vendors, etccan view an urban design process through AR scenes by Head-Mounted Display (HMD) glasses. Nowadays, the AR technology has been supported as a great graphical computing technology which promises to offer several advantages of applying for the digital architecture and construction fields. The AR effects enable users to examine 3D project models integrated into real environment in an intuitive way and real-time. Therefore, this research focuses on an establishment a kind of smart AR discussion spacethe Augmented Reality Conference Desk (named as ARCdesk for short). As the result, the participants can examine a planning process of urban design work in 3D/4D multi-phases by intuitive ways. In particular, all participants also can examine the digital urban mock-up from free views and they also can interact with whole models (or each part) during architectural discussion. As the novelty of research, the participants were suggested to manage and create the input digital urban models basing on use a range of available Google Earth facilities which are usability for architectural design, such as the Google SketchUp, Google Building Marker and Google 3D Warehouse. This example also involves the conceptual combination of AR and 4D construction simulation within indoor condition in order to simulate the phases such urban growing up. The implementation bases on the main technical theme: the imagery visionbased AR tracking and the Tangible Augmented Reality.