VIRTUAL

Peeyush Jain
ARCHITECTURE B.Arch. Semester X

Assignment 1
 1. Virtual Reality

 A set of images and sounds produced by a computer, which create a place or

a situation that a person can take part in
 Virtual reality (VR) means experiencing things through our computers that don't
really exist.
 VR places the user inside an experience. Instead of viewing a screen in front of
them, users are immersed and able to interact with 3D worlds.
 In Virtual Reality, the computer uses similar sensors and math. However, rather
than locating a real camera within a physical environment, the position of the
user’s eyes are located within the simulated environment. If the user’s head turns,
the graphics react accordingly. Rather than compositing virtual objects and a real
scene, VR technology creates a convincing, interactive world for the user.

Types of virtual reality

 Fully immersive
 Non-immersive
 Collaborative
 Web-based

Equipment do we need for virtual reality

 Head-mounted displays (HMDs)

 Immersive rooms
 Datagloves
 Wands

Image 1: Head Mounted Displays Image 2: Data Gloves

Virtual Architecture Assignment 1

 Applications of virtual reality
Education

Flight training is a classic

application of virtual reality,
though it doesn't use HMDs or
data gloves. Instead, you sit in
a pretend cockpit with
changing images projected
onto giant screens to give an
impression of the view you'd
see from your plane. The
cockpit is a meticulous replica
of the one in a real airplane with
exactly the same instruments
and controls.
Image 3: Fighter Aircraft training

Scientific visualization
If you're heading to Mars, a trip in
virtual reality could help you
visualize what you'll find when you
get there.

Image 4: Mars Visualization

Medicine
Apart from its use in things like surgical training and drug design, virtual reality
also makes possible telemedicine (monitoring, examining, or operating on
patients remotely). A logical extension of this has a surgeon in one location
hooked up to a virtual reality control panel and a robot in another location (maybe
an entire continent away) wielding the knife. The best-known example of this is
the daVinci surgical robot, released in 2009, of which several thousand have now
been installed in hospitals worldwide.

Virtual Architecture Assignment 1

 Industrial design and architecture
Architects used to build models out of card and paper; now they're much more
likely to build virtual reality computer models you can walk through and explore.
By the same token, it's generally much cheaper to design cars, airplanes, and
other complex, expensive vehicles on a computer screen than to model them
in wood, plastic, or other real-world materials. This is an area where virtual reality
overlaps with computer modeling: instead of simply making an immersive 3D
visual model for people to inspect and explore, you're creating a mathematical
model that can be tested for its aerodynamic, safety, or other qualities.

Games and entertainment

From flight simulators to race-car games, VR has long hovered on the edges of
the gaming world—never quite good enough to revolutionize the experience of
gamers, largely due to computers being too slow, displays lacking full 3D, and
the lack of decent HMDs and data gloves. All that may be about to change with
the development of affordable new peripherals like the Oculus Rift.

2. Augmented reality (AR)

 It is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that
reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual
information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities,
including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory.
 An augogram is a computer generated image that is used to create AR.
 Augography is the science and practice of making augograms for AR.
 AR can be defined as a system that fulfils three basic features: a combination of
real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual
and real objects.

Technology
There are two technologies used in augmented reality:
diffractive waveguides and reflective waveguides.

A head-mounted display (HMD) is a display device worn on the forehead, such

as a harness or helmet-mounted. HMDs place images of both the physical world
and virtual objects over the user's field of view. Modern HMDs often employ
sensors for six degrees of freedom monitoring that allow the system to align

Virtual Architecture Assignment 1

 virtual information to the physical world and adjust accordingly with the user's
head movements.

AR displays can be rendered on devices resembling eyeglasses. Versions

include eyewear that employs cameras to intercept the real world view and re-
display its augmented view through the eyepieces and devices in which the
AR imagery is projected through or reflected off the surfaces of the eyewear lens
pieces.

Possible applications

Architecture

AR can aid in visualizing building projects. Computer-generated images of a

structure can be superimposed onto a real-life local view of a property before the
physical building is constructed there; this was demonstrated publicly by Trimble
Navigation in 2004. AR can also be employed within an architect's workspace,
rendering animated 3D visualizations of their 2D drawings. Architecture sight-
seeing can be enhanced with AR applications, allowing users viewing a building's
exterior to virtually see through its walls, viewing its interior objects and layout.

Urban Design & Planning

AR systems are being used as both collaborative tools for design and planning
in the built environment. For example, AR can be used to create augmented
reality maps, buildings and data feeds projected onto table tops for collaborative
viewing by built environment professionals. Outdoor AR promises that designs
and plans can be superimposed on the real-world, redefining the remit of these
professions to bring in-situ design into their process. Design options can be
articulated on site, and appear closer to reality than traditional desktop
mechanisms such as 2D maps and 3d models.

Virtual Architecture Assignment 1

 3. Augmented Virtuality (AV)

It represents a method by which a virtual environment can beenriched

with information from the real world, with the purpose of connecting the virtual to
the real, and thus offering a broader cognitive context.

Augmented Virtuality (AV) represents a method by which a virtual

environment can be enriched with information from the real world, with the
purpose of connecting the virtual to the real, and thus offering a broader
cognitive context.

The live blending of information technology and media with real world
environments. Representing the real-time state of real world elements in media
and information technology environments.

Augmented virtuality (AV) is a subcategory of mixed reality that refers to the

merging of real-world objects into virtual worlds.

As an intermediate case in the virtuality continuum, it refers to predominantly

virtual spaces, where physical elements (such as physical objects or people) are
dynamically integrated into and can interact with the virtual world in real time. This
integration is achieved with the use of various techniques, such as streaming
video from physical spaces, like through a webcam or using the 3D digitalization
of physical objects.

Virtual Architecture Assignment 1

 4. Mixed Reality
Mixed reality (MR) is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new
environments and visualizations, where physical and digital objects co-exist and
interact in real time. Mixed reality does not exclusively take place in either the
physical or virtual world, but is a hybrid of reality and virtual reality,
encompassing both augmented reality and augmented virtuality via immersive
technology.

5. Immersion
Immersion into virtual reality (VR) is a perception of being physically present in
a non-physical world. The perception is created by surrounding the user of the
VR system in images, sound or other stimuli that provide an engrossing total
environment.

Immersion can be separated into three main categories:

Tactical immersion: Tactical immersion is experienced when performing tactile

operations that involve skill. Players feel "in the zone" while perfecting actions that
result in success.

Strategic immersion: Strategic immersion is more cerebral, and is associated

with mental challenge. Chess players experience strategic immersion when
choosing a correct solution among a broad array of possibilities.

Narrative immersion: Narrative immersion occurs when players become

invested in a story, and is similar to what is experienced while reading a book or
watching a movie.

Virtual reality (VR) locomotion is an essential interaction component enabling

navigation in VR environments

Virtual Architecture Assignment 1

 6. Teleportation
VR locomotion is technology that enables movement from one place to another
(locomotion) within a virtual reality environment. Locomotion through a virtual
environment is enabled by a variety of methods including head bobbing and arm
swinging, as well as other natural movements that translate to in-game
movements.

A few examples of VR locomotion:

Artificial locomotion involves the use of controllers to navigate through an

environment. One problem with that method is that it tends to cause VR sickness
by creating a discrepancy between what the user detects through vision and what
the movement-related systems within the inner ear detect.

For teleportation, another method of VR locomotion, the user might point to their
desired destination and click a button to automatically move there. In room-scale
VR, for example, the user might come to the physical limits of the room and then
choose to teleport to a different virtual location.

7. Foveated Rendering
Foveated rendering is a rendering technique which uses an eye
tracker integrated with a virtual reality headset to reduce the rendering workload
by greatly reducing the image quality in the peripheral vision (outside of the zone
gazed by the fovea)

A less sophisticated variant called fixed foveated rendering doesn't utilise eye
tracking and instead assumes a fixed focal point.

utilising foveated rendering in conjunction with sparse rendering and deep

learning image reconstruction has the potential to require only one twentieth of
the pixels to be rendered in comparison to a full image

Virtual Architecture Assignment 1

 8. Haptic Technology
Haptic technology, also known as kinaesthetic communication or 3D touch, refers
to any technology that can create an experience of touch by
applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user. These technologies can be
used to create virtual objects in a computer simulation, to control virtual objects,
and to enhance remote control of machines and devices (telerobotics). Haptic
devices may incorporate tactile sensors that measure forces exerted by the user
on the interface.

Haptic technology facilitates investigation of how the human sense of touch works
by allowing the creation of controlled haptic virtual objects. Most researchers
distinguish three sensory systems related to sense of touch in
humans: cutaneous, kinaesthetic and haptic. All perceptions mediated
by cutaneous and kinaesthetic sensibility are referred to as tactual perception.
The sense of touch may be classified as passive and active, and the term "haptic"
is often associated with active touch to communicate or recognize objects

Virtual Architecture Assignment 1