Abstract
Advances in Virtual Reality (VR) technologies have enhanced the possibility of including this tool in design review procedures intuitively for users. This exploratory research investigates the users’ perception of spatial dimensions and apparent surface temperature in HMD-based Immersive Virtual Environments (HIVE). It aims to raise new questions in the study of VR technologies during design evaluation procedures. The case study consisted of modelling the Pinacoteca building north atrium in São Paulo, Brazil, in VR to assess how users perceive the room according to its dimensions and sense of surface temperature (floor, walls, footbridges, elevators and roof). This exploratory study was conducted with 40 first-time visitors at the Pinacoteca building. The results revealed that users’ immediate position and viewpoint may induce different perceptions of spatial dimensions and sense of surface temperature. The first conclusion is that instant distance to viewpoint influenced users’ perception of width of the immersive virtual environment. The second conclusion was that virtual insolation influenced users’ sense of surface temperature despite the materiality. To sum up, the contribution of this paper is the associative study of spatial perception and sense of surface temperature with instant position and viewpoint of users immersed in HIVE.
Highlights
Throughout the architectural design process, design review procedures are required to achieve better results in architectural projects
This paper investigated the users’ perception of spatial dimensions and surface temperature in HMD-based Immersive Virtual Environments (HIVE)
Spatial perception Even though the participants could move through the IVE, significant differences were found in the correlation to the position and target viewpoint of the users at the time they were questioned about their perception of spatial dimensions
Summary
Throughout the architectural design process, design review procedures are required to achieve better results in architectural projects. End-users are not often included in the design process in early design review phases (BULLINGER et al, 2010). The study applied Building Information Modeling (BIM), user activity simulation, and requirement management techniques to develop a Pre-Design Evaluation Method (PD) and demonstrated that systematic procedures conducted with end-users lead to wider participation compared to traditional approaches. It allows an intuitive approach towards aspects to be evaluated (KOUTSABASIS et al, 2012) even when compared to other traditional design tools (SOUZA; IMAI; AZUMA, 2013). This intuitive approach is a result of the combination of immersion and interaction. This intuitive approach is a result of the combination of immersion and interaction. Freitas and Ruschel (2010) describe immersion as the feeling of being inside a virtual environment, while interaction is the machine's ability to detect user movement inputs. Florio and Tagliari (2016) compared two-dimensional drawings as a static representation of the space, similar to a photograph, which captures an "action" at a given moment in time, while threedimensional immersive models include time in spatial perception
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