Sustainable Solutions by the Use of Immersive Technologies for Repurposing Buildings

Abstract

In the context of urban production and sustainable reuse of existing buildings, a detailed planning of the later usage is indispensable. One approach is to enable large-scale AR simulation on site with a sufficient Level of Detail (LoD) and stability. To determine performance metrics, a technology-stack is created and presented that enables a realistic field experiment in an industrial environment (area of 1,314 m2) using Microsoft HoloLens 2. For the experiment, a 3D model was instantiated as often as possible up to the limit of system stability and in different LoDs (100% down to 10%). The result shows that it is feasible to represent 2.63 million polygons (equivalent to about 1,909 m3 of augmented space) on LOD-35%; LoD-100% is equivalent to 327.38 m3 and 1,284 million polygons. Polygonal density [polygons/m3] is introduced as new indicator for better comparability when using 3D models. Thus, it is possible to immersively visualize urban production planning processes in large-scale scenarios. This expands the functional planning space of Urban Production and overcomes previous technical limitations.