RadVR: A 6DOF Virtual Reality Daylighting Analysis Tool

PubDate:

Teams: University of California

Writers: Mohammad Keshavarzi, Luisa Caldas, Luis Santos

PDF: RadVR: A 6DOF Virtual Reality Daylighting Analysis Tool

Abstract

This work introduces RadVR, a virtual reality daylighiting analysis tools, that simultaneously allows the analysis of qualitative immersive renderings and the assessment of quantitative data of physically correct daylighting simulations in a 6DOF virtual environment. With an end-to-end workflow and integration with commonly used modeling software, the system takes a 3D model and material properties as input and allows user-designers to (1) perform physically-based daylighting simulations powered by the Radiance engine (2) study sunlight penetration in different hours of the year by navigating through time (3) Interact with a 9-point-in-time matrix for the nine most representative times of the year (4) Visualize, compare and analyze daylighting simulation results using integrated tools in virtual reality. By conducting user experiments and comparing the system with a conventional 2D-display daylight analysis tool, Diva4Rhino, the results show that RadVR outperforms Diva4Rhino in spatial understanding tasks, navigation and sun position analysis.