MING TANG Architectural Visualization Ni Het Age Of Mxedi .

Through intense training, studentsquickly grasped the technique ofalternating the virtual site in a gameengine. Landscape, including treesand grass, was carefully added tomatch the characteristics of thereal site. Through the VR system,students explored various designconcepts by “walking” with HMD.Additionally, a daylight systemallowed students to simulatesunlight in different times of theday, and adjust their buildingenvelope to achieve the best result.We also customized the userinterface and provided visual cuesto assist with communication,and a bird’s-eye map was addedon top of the 3D scene to illus trate player’s current locationand orientation.To compress the design timeline and maximize the efficiencyof workflow, we used various 3Dmodeling tools, which allowedstudents to quickly generateparametric models and load theminto a game engine, to thenexport them into VR. Materialswere procedurally generated inthe game engine with node-basednetworks. Reflection probe andlight probe were used to simulatereflective materials and dynamiclighting, sunlight, and skylight wereset up to generate global illumin ation and dynamic daylight system,and point lights and spotlights wereadded to simulate interior artificiallight. In the end, students were alsorequired to review each other’sworks in the VR environment by“walking through” their building.Several design issues were add ressed during this VR walkthrough,including the interior circulationof the building, the visualconnection between the designedbuilding and existing urbancontext, as well as the changingview the proposed past.During the critiques, reviewerseither actively controlled their navigation using HMD or observedothers walking through a building.In the second scenario, reviewersgave commands such as “turnaround”, “go to the second floor”,and “look out of the window” tothe players. Usually, a passiveobserver would switch his/herrole to an active player by wear ing HMD. With the game controller,informaFigure 2. Architecture studio review with an Oculus Riftand a large screen at the University of Cincinnati.players selected their path andnavi gated through the buildingwhile asking questions and givingcomments simultaneously. The VRaided-critic is very similar to thenatural way of critiquing a buildingwhen two people are physicallywalking together. However, thiscritique is more comprehensivethan a traditional review becausethe large screen makes it possiblefor the audience to directly observethe player’s gaze in real time andunderstand their verbal comments,the audience would realize whatdesign features attracted the player’s attention, how long it took theplayer to find a specific path, andwhere the player got confused(Fig. 2).Reviewers were able to useVR as a new communication instrument to discuss the spatial qualityin an immersive environment.VR “allows the critic to becomeengaged and immersed in theproject.point out moments ofstrength/weakness in the designand areas to improve on” (Survey).Spatial memory and cognitivefeatures of design were discussedwhile at the moment of walkinginside of the virtual space. Thereare also lessons learned in thisstudio. Because we limit the player’s walking speed to match human’sactual walking speed in the physicalworld, it took a long time for playersto walk through a large site. Therefore, a flythrough or teleport modewas suggested. Since there were noother animated figures on the site,players felt strange when they“walk along” in the empty building.STUDIO II: URBAN MOBILITYAND PUBLIC SPACEAfter the first studio, we started thesecond MR studio to address someof the questions and problemswe discovered in the former one.The new studio presents a studyinvestigating urban mobilityand public space integration byvisualizing urban informationthrough MR technologies.In this studio, Microsoft HoloLens was also deployed to exploreAR applications. Being differentfrom computer renderings in VR,hologram technology provides aphotographic record of a light field.Students visualized their designswithin a HoloLens 3D environmentusing gesture and voice recognition.By applying Unity’s AR support todevelop MR applications, variousinteractivities such as gaze, gesture,voice, spatial sound, and spatialmapping were tested through Holo- Lens’ emulator. In the end, designprojects were developed and compiled as apps in HoloLens. Studentsalso applied 3D modeling toolsto build conceptual models, imported them into a game engine,and compiled them to HoloLens.Various gesture-based interactions,such as rotation, scale, and moveallowed users to manipulate themodels virtually.85

Figure 3. The studio project is presented as hologram models with Microsoft HoloLens.A user can interact with the model with gesture and voice.Compared with Oculus Rift,HoloLens HMD is itself a power ful computer which provides userswith a freedom to explore thedigital content. With its spatialmapping technology, AR givesusers an unlimited space to nav igate through. More critically, ARdoes not exclude the virtual worldfrom the physical one. Users canstill observe the physical environ ment and interact with other peoplewhile exploring the overlaid digitalcontent, while also allowing virtualcollaboration by connecting multiple HoloLens HMDs (Fig. 3). In thestudio, we also improvedVR methods by introducing fly through navigation, as well asmass animated crowd systems.We connected agent-based simulation and streamed the animatedcrowd into the VR system, findingan effective fit between urbanmobility research and pedestrianmovement in public space.The first-person experience wasalso captured on a 360-degreespherical video, and shared throughGoogle cardboard.At the end of the second studio,we surveyed both methods (VRand AR) with students and reviewers.86VR received a higher satisfactionrate primarily due to its higherrendering quality. Indeed, thesetwo methods provide entirelydifferent rendering styles. VR ren- dering with Unity or Unreal can bedescribed as ‘hyper-reality’ dueto its photorealistic rendering.AR Rendering running with HoloLens is more an abstract realitydue to its limited rendering power.We can anticipate that AR will   con- tinue to be developed and reach ahigher rendering capacity in thenear future. Overall, players feelmore ‘immersed’ in the VR ‘hyper-real’ world. Another reasonfor VR’s higher satisfaction rateis its natural interaction. VR agame controller allows viewers tointeract with 3D objects. Users canopen or close doors and windows,turn the lights on and off, or takean elevator by using buttons on anXbox controller or Oculus Touch.These well-understood interactionspsychologically increased players’presence level and made the scenemore believable. However, the gaze,voice, and gesture control in AR arenot rooted in the real world anddisconnects with our mindset ina virtual environment. We alsofound that VR-based 360-degreevideo has a high potential to allowthe viewers to partially enjoy thefreedom of VR, while it has fixedthe camera path in a predefinedcurve. This video-based methodis proficient in maintaining thehigh-quality rendering with theright frame rate, without the needfor an expensive high-end computer. By using a simple mobile phoneand Google cardboard, viewers canexperience VR easily.CONCLUSIONDuring the past two years, ourresearch and teaching have focusedon applying MR in the architecturaldesign process, where sensoryintensive “immersive displays”facilitate many design decisions.VR and AR integrate site survey,design evaluation, and constructionwithin a new communicationsystem, which allows a proposedspace to be generated, visualized,and shared quickly. Both methodshave achieved this primary goal.With a steep learning curve, studentscan master these advanced technologies and use them to assist theirdesign. By implementing theseTang, Ming. 2018. “Architectural Visualization inthe Age of Mixed Reality.” informa 11: 82–87.

methods to the studio projects, wefind some benefits as well as someconstraints.BENEFIT OF MR AS A MEDIUMOF COMMUNICATIONArchitect Ana Regina MizrahyCuperschmid described the benefitof applying MR using a smartphoneand smart glasses in the assemblyof a precast wood-frame wall, basedon the BIM model of the wallexecution sequence (Cuperschmid,Grachet, Fabrício, 2016). MR servedas a visualization tool for trainingand construction quality control.In our approach, MR, as a designinstrument, is applied in the earlystages of the design process. In ourproject, building models wereimported into the game engineand visualized through HMD.This pipeline enabled students todesign, exam, and modify theirdesign while interacting with it.It became a fast cycle of refiningand evaluation. There was a significant amount of positive feedbackfrom faculty and students whenthey “interactively walked inside”of a proposed design.After exploring the VR environment, students had the opportunityto understand the meaning ofmovement patterns. They experienced how color, lighting, andmaterials could affect people’sperception of space. A studentmentioned in the survey that “theprimary benefit, currently, is inspatial (including scale, adjacency,and circulatory flow) perceptionand ‘buy-in’ for stakeholders, whilealso having high marketing valuefor new practices.” A reviewermentioned: “It can more accuratelyrepresent the experience onewould have in reality hence (virtualreality), as opposed to othertypes of representation, such as2D drawings and renderings.The ability to understand thepsychology of a piece of architecture is made easier with VR.”In the VR environment, designissues such as scale, proportion,rhythm, and circulation werediscussed in a “natural” way whenboth the reviewer and the designer“walked” through space sim ultaneously. VR has stimulatedmore thoughts on spatialinformarecognition, spatial memory, andother unforeseeable design topics,but these were too complicated tobe addressed in the studio.CONSTRAINTS OF MRAS A MEDIUM OFCOMMUNICATIONBesides the well-known motionsickness of HMD, we also foundother limitations of MR as anemerging architectural comm unication system. In various studiopresentation, students are en couraged to use MR without 2Dsections and plans displayed onboards. However, we quickly foundout about the problems associatedwith abandoning these traditionalrepresentation methods. Accordingto a participant in our survey, VRhas difficulty in illustrating “overallunderstanding of the concept as itrelates to a program of the buildingor space (typically displayed withsite plans, sections, and buildingplans)” (anonymous, survey, 2016).“Similar limitation exists within thisdesign communication process/methodology as when well-executedrenderings take center stage (oftenthe case in our profession). The ‘wowfactor’ of product and technologyover shadows discussion, finetuned development, and evidencebased disclosure of social, legal,and building science design pro gramming.” Some studentsmentioned: “It (VR) gives thefirst-person interaction with space,but not with the overall mood of thespace (i.e., more materiality, lightingconditions, and tactile relationshipswith the building).” “(It is) hard tocomprehend the big idea throughthe process and organizationalstrategies of the design concept.”After observing the limits of MRas an interface during the comm unication, some reviewers arguedthat “it cannot be the only form ofpresentation but rather another toolfor students and critics to under stand the student’s vision and idea”,and suggested to “have studentsconstruct a ‘pre-programmed path’with highlights to streamline theinteraction and incorporate meansto receive and document feedback.”Some reviewers pointed towardthe need for data beyond just thesensory experience. “HybridizeVR much in the way BIM hashybridized embedded informationwithin the model. Dashboardsand other visual, ‘on call’ feedbacks(visual, audio, and haptic) can befurther developed within real-timeVR models to bring higher meaning,interactivity, and holistic integrityto future stakeholder presentations.”We also observed that theperformance and frame rate of MRwould drop dramatically if a scenehad a large number of polygonalfaces. The level of detail (LOD)required the building to bemodeled efficiently to minimize thepolygon number, which has neverbeen a priority in the standard BIMsoftware. The skills to optimizea complex model for real-timerendering is essential. However,as a side effect, the low polygonmodel will lose details and lookworse when the camera gets closerto the object in HMD. Studentsmentioned that “being able to detaila digital model to the level that auser would perceive in reality, canstrain the limitation of our currentcomputing power and is not veryeasy to use for someone with noexperience in operating the soft ware and other componentsnecessary to have the experience The digital model needs to beat a level of detail not needed inother representations.”Overall, we gained an under standing of MR as a new means ofcommunication which should notonly be used for generating sensoryexperience, nor to create a copy ofphysical reality. The MR technologyis becoming an ‘ultimate display’which will allow us to explore,discover, evaluate, and improveour design. In other words, itshould become a part of an iterativeprocess of our continuouslyevolving architectural practice.87

Tang, Ming. 2018. “Architectural Visualization in the Age of Mixed Reality.” informa 11: 82–87. Architectural Visualization ni het Age of Mxedi yt i Real. informa 83 ABSTRACT . transferred to the Unity engine, and compiled into Oculus Rift. Computer-generated crowds with AI controlled wayfinding be