Shedding Light on Game Engines and Virtual Reality for Design Ideation

Abstract

While pen-and-paper sketches is generally considered the best tool for design ideation, there are certain areas of design where the ideas being generated do not easily lend themselves to sketching. This study reports on two cases that explores the use of game engines in combination with Virtual Reality (VR) to visualize lighting in the automotive industry. In the first case, the exterior lights of a car were visualized using Unreal Engine 4 and evaluated using research through design and expert interviews. In the second case, Unreal Engine VR Editor was used to explore ideation and concept development of interior lighting in long haulage trucks. The insights from the cases suggest that game engines and VR can be used to quickly develop and display ideas, concepts and scenarios in the early phases of the lighting design process. These strengths suggest that game engines and VR also have the potential to support design ideation for other types of design.

Application of VR technology in the aircraft cabin design process

“…3D models in globally accepted CAD software such as Rhino, Alias or CATIA seem to be able to partway transfer the intended message. These tools are however time consuming, due to the fact that rendering those kinds of effects takes up a lot of computational power and therefore, even with state-of-the-art computers, iteration times remain long [5].…”

“…Especially when lighting is designed, commonplace sketching methods fail short to communicate the experience meant for the user. 3D CAD models are certainly capable to show this aspect of the product, but they have a very long iteration time as these kinds of details are computationally heavy to render [5]. This makes the iterations and changes in these aspects of the design rather undesirable, for it might induce delays in the original planning.…”

Linking a game-engine with CAD-software to create a flexible platform for researching extended reality interfaces for the industrial design process

“…Ekströmer et al used the Unreal Engine's extensive real-time lighting features to support automotive designers to develop car lamps [15]. Exterior and interior light designs were developed and evaluated with and without the usage of VR.…”

LevelEd VR: A virtual reality level editor and workflow for virtual reality level design

“…The interface was easy to use but limits what users can create. Whilst not level design or games focused, Ekströmer et al [14] utilised Unreal Engine's VR mode to enable design ideation of lights in truck cabins. They showed potential for these tools for design but focused on manipulation of the lights.…”