Virtual reality as an educational tool in interior architecture

Ankara : The Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design and the Institute of Fine Arts of Bilkent Univ., 1997.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 1997.Includes bibliographical references.This thesis discusses the use of virtual reality technology as an educational tool in interior architectural design. As a result of this discussion, it is proposed that virtual reality can be of use in aiding three-dimensional design and visualization, and may speed up the design process. It may also be of help in getting the designers/students more involved in their design projects. Virtual reality can enhance the capacity of designers to design in three dimensions. The virtual reality environment used in designing should be capable of aiding both the design and the presentation process. The tradeoffs of the technology, newly emerging trends and future directions in virtual reality are discussed.Aktaş, OrkunM.S

2 1/2, Dimensional (2 1/2 D) Web-Based Virtual Walkthrough (VW) of Chancellor Hall (CH) and Undercroft of Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP)

This project will focus on the development of a 2 Yz D Virtual Walkthrough of Chancellor Hall and Undercroft ofUTP. The virtual walkthrough is developed in 2 'h dimensional in order to reduce the size of the virtual walkthrough. Besides that, the virtual walkthrough is available on the Internet so that it can be easily obtainable and accessible by people. The existing visualization of both CH and Undercroft of UTP does not offer sufficient illustration. The insufficiency leads to the issue of getting lost among individuals whom is coming for the first time to UTP. The insufficiency also can lead to dissatisfaction particularly among the potential sponsors of an event when the location provided which is where the event been held does not meet their expectation. Therefore, this project is meant to provide a virtual visualization to mainly the individuals who have never been to the CH and Undercroft of UTP due to distance constraint. Besides that, this project aims to provide an easy understanding and initial direction on how to move from one location to another location as well as the facilities within CHand Undercroft ofUTP by providing a better illustration than the existing visualization

Automatic Speed Control For Navigation in 3D Virtual Environment

As technology progresses, the scale and complexity of 3D virtual environments can also increase proportionally. This leads to multiscale virtual environments, which are environments that contain groups of objects with extremely unequal levels of scale. Ideally the user should be able to navigate such environments efficiently and robustly. Yet, most previous methods to automatically control the speed of navigation do not generalize well to environments with widely varying scales. I present an improved method to automatically control the navigation speed of the user in 3D virtual environments. The main benefit of my approach is that automatically adapts the navigation speed in multi-scale environments in a manner that enables efficient navigation with maximum freedom, while still avoiding collisions. The results of a usability tests show a significant reduction in the completion time for a multi-scale navigation task

ISMCR 1994: Topical Workshop on Virtual Reality. Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Measurement and Control in Robotics

This symposium on measurement and control in robotics included sessions on: (1) rendering, including tactile perception and applied virtual reality; (2) applications in simulated medical procedures and telerobotics; (3) tracking sensors in a virtual environment; (4) displays for virtual reality applications; (5) sensory feedback including a virtual environment application with partial gravity simulation; and (6) applications in education, entertainment, technical writing, and animation

Perspective Switching in Virtual Environments

When exploring new environments, people regularly alternate among many sources of spatial information including direct visual input, navigation aids such as maps and mobile devices, and verbal route descriptions. These spatial representations typically depict the environment from one of two perspectives: first-person, embedded route perspective or top-down, bird's eye survey perspective. Visual spatial cognition research has explored the nature of learning within each of these perspectives independently, but little work has been done to explore how on-line visual processing of combined perspectives affects cognition, meaning there is little understanding of the cognitive costs of using different navigation tools to learn large-scale environments. This dissertation addresses such questions through two experiments that guide participants through simple paths in large-scale environments, each consisting of a simple path through a small virtual town presented on a desktop computer display. By timing participants' movement through each environment and how they respond to either externally-controlled or participant-controlled perspective switches, the experiments measure the cognitive load of visually processing dynamic perspectives during navigation. These on-line processing measures are complemented by tests of visual recognition and recall memory, which reveal how switching perspectives affects the accuracy of the resulting spatial mental model. The results indicate that the cognitive load associated with changing perspectives is primarily dependent on the quantity of visual information the change introduces -- the transformation itself is not particularly disorienting after the first exposure to the environment. Furthermore, although forced perspective switches do not appear to significantly affect spatial memory accuracy relative to viewing the environment from a consistent perspective, navigator-controlled switching results in significantly more accurate spatial memory, indicating that navigation aids which allow for perspective control might better support spatial learning than fixed-perspective interfaces. The findings also support previous research showing that route perspective navigation generally yields more accurate spatial memory than survey perspective learning, particularly after extensive experience in the environment. Overall, the findings demonstrate many new aspects of how perspective affects spatial cognition, with implications for spatial learning and the design of navigation aids

2 1/2, Dimensional (2 1/2 D) Web-Based Virtual Walkthrough (VW) of Chancellor Hall (CH) and Undercroft of Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP)

This project will focus on the development of a 2 Yz D Virtual Walkthrough of Chancellor Hall and Undercroft ofUTP. The virtual walkthrough is developed in 2 'h dimensional in order to reduce the size of the virtual walkthrough. Besides that, the virtual walkthrough is available on the Internet so that it can be easily obtainable and accessible by people. The existing visualization of both CH and Undercroft of UTP does not offer sufficient illustration. The insufficiency leads to the issue of getting lost among individuals whom is coming for the first time to UTP. The insufficiency also can lead to dissatisfaction particularly among the potential sponsors of an event when the location provided which is where the event been held does not meet their expectation. Therefore, this project is meant to provide a virtual visualization to mainly the individuals who have never been to the CH and Undercroft of UTP due to distance constraint. Besides that, this project aims to provide an easy understanding and initial direction on how to move from one location to another location as well as the facilities within CHand Undercroft ofUTP by providing a better illustration than the existing visualization

Design Architecture in Virtual Reality

Architectural representation has newly been introduced to Virtual Reality (VR) technology, which provides architects with a medium to showcase unbuilt designs as immersive experiences. Designers can use specialized VR headsets and equipment to provide a client or member of their design team with the illusion of being within the digital space they are presented on screen. This mode of representation is unprecedented to the architectural field, as VR is able to create the sensation of being encompassed in an environment at full scale, potentially eliciting a visceral response from users, similar to the response physical architecture produces. While this premise makes the technology highly applicable towards the architectural practice, it might not be the most practical medium to communicate design intent. Since VR’s conception, the primary software to facilitate VR content creation has been geared towards programmers rather than architects. The practicality of integrating virtual reality within a traditional architectural design workflow is often overlooked in the discussion surrounding the use of VR to represent design projects. This thesis aims to investigate the practicality of VR as part of a design methodology, through the assessment of efficacy and efficiency, while studying the integration of VR into the architectural workflow. This is done by examining the creation of stereoscopic renderings, walkthrough animations, interactive iterations and quick demonstrations as explorations of common architectural visualization techniques using VR. Experimentation with each visualization method is supplemented with a documentation of the VR scene creation process across an approximated time frame to measure efficiency, and a set of evaluation parameters to measure efficacy. Experiments either yielded the creation of a successful experience that exceeded the time constraints a common fast-paced architectural firm might allow for the task (low efficiency) or created a limiting experience where interaction and functionality were not executed to meet the required industry standards (low efficacy). This resultant impracticality based on time and effort, demonstrates that a successfully immersive VR simulation is not produced simplistically in VR; requiring a great deal of thought to be placed into design intent. Although impractical, documentation suggests that the user experience of creating VR content might be able to engage new ways of design thinking and impact the way architects conceptualize space, encouraging further research

The Utilization of Virtual Reality for Commercial Purpose: Taking Television Broadcast Advertising as an Example

In general, current research suggests that virtual environments, compared to classical advertising media, provide users with a higher level of presence, more perceptual and psychological immersion. This paper reviews how virtual reality enables private companies and public organizations to support business advertising by creating new business opportunities and to promote more proactive service management by using television broadcast advertising as a medium. This, in turn, will have the effect of making him I her less aware of embedded persuasive message, which will thus have a moderating effect on various advertising-related outcomes, less advertising recall, but more positive brand attitude, and favorable purchase intention This paper that due to their specific character, integration, interactivity, hypermedia, immersive and narrative virtual environment could be a more effective persuasion charmel than classical advertising media. This is a momentum to see how far virtual reality is able to rival video in television advertising. Virtual reality has grown very well nowadays but the usage in society and in the business community is minimal. Therefore, by introducing virtual reality in new environment; advertising will create a new era, which provides technical foundation for the computer software and hardware that drives to the advertising environment. This project will be of interest to practitioners involved in virtual environment development in the television broadcast advertising. The scope of studies for this project covered the advertising, education, entertainment and human senses. All scopes are inter-related in this research. Rapid Application Development (RAD) has been chosen as a methodology of the project. This will be a useful finding for product in virtual reality advertising.