Low-cost virtual reality environment for engineering and construction

Abstract

Background: Presenting significant building or engineering 3D-models is a crucial part of the planning, construction and maintenance phases in terms of collaboration and understanding. Especially in complex or largescale models, immersion is one of the major key factors for being able to intuitively perceive all aspects of the scene. A fully immersive system needs to give the user a large field-of-view with reduced latency for lifelike impression. Technologies such as VRwalls and shutter glasses can deliver high refresh rates, yet fail to give a large field-of-view. Head-mounted-devices for virtual reality fill this gap. Head tracking mechanisms translate movements of the user's head into virtual camera movements and enable a natural way of examining models. Unlike a stereoscopic representation with projectors, point-of-view tracking can be achieved separately for each individual user. Hardware costs for such systems were very high in the past, but have dropped due to virtual reality systems now gaining traction in the mainstream gaming community. Methods: In this paper we present a way to build a low-cost, highly immersive virtual reality environment for engineering and construction applications. Furthermore, we present a method to simplify and partly automate the process of reusing digital building models, which are already used in construction, to create virtual scenes, instead of having to do parallel content creation for visualization. Using the Oculus Rift head-mounted display and the Leap Motion hand-tracking device, we show the possibilities of naturally interacting within a virtual space in different use cases. The software, based on the popular game engine Unreal Engine 4, will be used as a basis for further research and development. Results: Building Information Modeling data can be imported to UE4 with our presented plugin. Using an automated database for mapping materials to the geometry simplifies the process of importing Building Information Modeling entities. The refresh rate of the system stays within acceptable margins needed for virtual reality applications using head-mounted devices. Conclusions: Head-mounted devices present a great potential for the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry, as a person can experience realistic first-person situations without having to care about injuries. Automated processes for the simplification of content creation, leveraging existing models, and the usage of visual programming languages enable even nonprogrammers to create scenarios to their needs.

Virtual Reality: Blessings and Risk Assessment

“…This not only increased the customer trust but also helped the constructors finding faults and making variations accordingly quite easily. The usage of VR in the field of engineering and construction, with the aim to create a remarkable evolution by giving a whole new experience to a person in visualizing a 3D simulated structure has been discussed by 71 . Earlier it was very expensive to viewing a particular complex than the current economical feature of the VR technology.…”

BIM‐unterstützte Erstellung interaktiver, immersiver VR‐Szenarien am Beispiel der Brandbekämpfung

“…Neben der Kollaboration, speziell auch zwischen verschiedenen Fachdisziplinen [7] oder in der Ausbildung [8], liegt der Fokus bei der Nutzung von VR-Technologien im Bauwesen häufig auf der Visualisierung und einer damit verbundenen Erhöhung des Verständnisses für die Strukturen speziell komplexer Gebäude. Um eine möglichst realitätsnahe Darstellung zu gewährleisten, werden hierbei häufig CAD-Pläne oder digitale Gebäudemodelle verwendet, um aus ihnen die zugehörige Geometrie abzuleiten [9], [10].…”

Virtual Manipulation in an Immersive Virtual Environment: Simulation of Virtual Assembly

“…Furthermore, VR can improve communication between different parties (Balali et al 2018), improve safety (State and State 2017), and provide effective training programs (Kayhani et al 2019). In addition, combining VR with hand motion tracking technologies such as Leap Motion can provide a realistic first-person situation where the user can interact, move, and rotate the objects using their hands (Hilfert and König 2016). This technology further improves the spatial perception of the user which finally leads to easier discrepancy detection and improving user performance in detecting manufacturing defects.…”