Abstract
Virtual reality (VR) is quickly becoming the medium of choice for various architecture, engineering, and construction applications, such as design visualization, construction planning, and safety training. In particular, this technology offers an immersive experience to enhance the way architects review their design with team members. Traditionally, VR has used a desktop PC or workstation setup inside a room, yielding the risk of two users bump into each other while using multiuser VR (MUVR) applications. MUVR offers shared experiences that disrupt the conventional single-user VR setup, where multiple users can communicate and interact in the same virtual space, providing more realistic scenarios for architects in the design stage. However, this shared virtual environment introduces challenges regarding limited human locomotion and interactions, due to physical constraints of normal room spaces. This study thus presented a system framework that integrates MUVR applications into omnidirectional treadmills. The treadmills allow users an immersive walking experience in the simulated environment, without space constraints or hurt potentialities. A prototype was set up and tested in several scenarios by practitioners and students. The validated MUVR treadmill system aims to promote high-level immersion in architectural design review and collaboration.
Highlights
The advanced building information modeling (BIM) technology has completely changed how architects approach building design
This study aimed to develop a BIM-based multiuser VR (MUVR) treadmill system to promote high-level immersion in the design review process, offering architects a more realistic way to design BIM models collaboratively in the virtual environment
The results revealed that the system performed well in user interactions in the virtual environment
Summary
The advanced building information modeling (BIM) technology has completely changed how architects approach building design. The potent BIM tools energize architects’ innovation to create exceptional designs that could not be made by most traditional methods [1]. It is challenging for architects to present complicated and sophisticated designs if conventional 2D or 3D representations are adopted. Virtual reality (VR) has much potential for architects and designers, as this revolutionary technology transports users into an immersive virtual environment, allowing them to explore a simulated representation of a particular room, floor, or building design as a whole with their partners. VR offers practical solutions with computer-generated artificial realities, and it is entering mainstream use in various fields, such as entertainment, education, design, engineering, and health services [4]
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