by Kim O’Connell

This scenario is becoming increasingly common as more architects incorporate virtual reality (VR) into their practices. Along with its cousins—augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR)—virtual reality allows designers to push the boundaries of visualization, giving colleagues and clients new ways to experience and understand a building or space long before it is actually built. With VR, architects can transmit not just what a building will look like, but also what it will feel like.

“Traditionally in architecture, you have blueprints and scale models, and 3D modeling has been around in force for the last 20 years,” says Jeff Mottle, president and CEO of CGarchitect Digital Media Corp. and publisher of CGarchitect, an online magazine and community for architectural-visualization professionals. “VR plays into these traditional methods because the two fit closely together, more than the manufacturers actually realize.”

Manufacturers still mostly view VR for gaming rather than enterprise solutions – but that is changing, according to Mottle, who just moderated a panel about these emerging technologies at this year’s Autodesk University Las Vegas.
With the dizzying rate of technology advancement and growing options, here are four considerations for firms thinking of entering this brave new virtual world.

1. VR is a rapidly changing industry.

Virtual reality has been around in some form for decades (with the first head-mounted systems debuting in 1968), but the technology has not been elastic or advanced enough to have widespread application until now. With advances in mobile technology, which placed high-resolution imagery into everyone’s hands, VR has experienced an explosion in the past two years.

Widely available head-mounted displays (HMDs) such as Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive, Microsoft HoloLens, and Google Cardboard have brought VR into the mainstream and made it more affordable (although costs generally still run from hundreds to thousands). Facebook’s purchase of Oculus for $2 billion in 2014 also offered the industry a highly visible boost.

“One of the challenges is everything is changing so quickly,” Mottle says. “Not everyone has the time or resources to try every one of these HMDs, so we’re trying to get the dialogue going to discuss the pros and cons.”

According to a survey in CGarchitect, the leading users of VR for architectural visualization are in Europe (40 percent) and the United States (21 percent), with commenters saying that the technology will be revolutionary for the industry. Nearly 70 percent of respondents are using VR/AR/MR in production or planning to do so in 2017, while 77 percent were experimenting with the technology or planning to do so.

2. VR, AR, and MR are similar but have different capabilities.

VR is the immersive, full-headset experience that most people associate with this technology. “With virtual reality, you’re immersing yourself into a virtual environment and closing yourself off completely from the outside world,” Mottle says. “Depending on which device you’re using, you could do room-scale VR and ‘walk’ through the space.” (And with grid guidelines in your virtual world, you won’t accidentally walk into a real wall.)

With augmented reality, data and/or instructional information are animated over the real-world view, often through smaller devices such as a mobile phone or tablet. Pokémon Go is a popular consumer example of an augmented-reality app; a professional use case would be an engineer remotely teaching a mechanic how to repair something.

Then there’s MR: Mixing together aspects of VR and AR, MR takes virtual objects and overlays them onto the real world. Two people (say, an architect and a structural engineer based in another country) can be networked into a virtual world where they can interact together with a virtual building on a real site.

3. Architects can use VR at various stages in the design process.

One benefit of VR is that it can be rendered at different Levels of Detail (LOD), so an architect in the early design phase could have an immersive experience in a non-photorealistic room, just to get a sense of spatial relationships and massing. Or the experience could be hyperreal, so that a VR video could have soft sunlight filtering down through a clerestory window, with the sound of birds chirping outside (for client presentations).

Increasingly, architects are integrating VR hardware such as HTC Vive and Oculus with BIM software. “This will allow architects and clients alike to truly understand the spatial qualities of the project,” says Kim Baumann Larsen, an architect and the VR advisor for The Future Group. “This spatial understanding should make clients more confident in the design and reduce time spent in meetings and the use of lateral design revisions.”

Mobile VR solutions using cardboard headsets and a smartphone are another increasingly popular solution. “The architect can render stereo 360 panoramic images directly from the BIM software such as [Autodesk] Revit or using a visualization tool like 3ds Max with V-Ray, and publish the images to the web using third-party services like VRto.me or IrisVR Scope,” Larsen says.

4. VR has some catching up to do with the architecture industry.

VR requires a fair amount of expertise, and it’s challenging for architects to find work time to experiment with the technology. “For the most part, VR relies on gaming engines to develop these immersive experiences,” Mottle says. “That has a whole different workflow and paradigm than architecture.”

He hopes that manufacturers will see the potential for developing VR solutions specifically geared toward architecture. Already, some firms are translating BIM data into VR with platforms such as Autodesk LIVE and Stingray, which maintains important building data that other gaming systems don’t capture. For now, though, gaming systems tend to focus on creating idealized end-user VR experiences rather than applications for iterative building-project design and construction.

The more architects get involved with VR, the more they can shape the future marketplace. “I’d really like to see these VR companies realize that there’s a market beyond gaming and the consumer market,” Mottle says. “I would like them to see that there are some huge opportunities and synergies with the design world.”

But Larsen says architects shouldn’t wait to dig in: “Get a PC-based VR system like the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift for exploring design from BIM tools, and play with mobile VR using cardboard and Gear VR and Google’s View to distribute your designs in VR to clients and collaborators alike. The most important thing is to start experimenting.”

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This article originally appeared on Autodesk’s Redshift, a site dedicated to inspiring designers, engineers, builders, and makers.

Kim O’Connell is a Washington, D.C. area writer specializing in history, nature, architecture, and life. In addition to writing for a range of national and regional publications, she is a former writer in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Shenandoah National Park. She can be reached via her website, kimaoconnell.com.

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Computer graphics have come a long way since Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad. Sutherland’s vision of entire environments being controlled and generated by computers has become more of a reality in the last decade. Gadgets such as head-mounted displays, data gloves, virtual reality controllers, and motion trackers are all promising to become as commonly used as smartphones. While skeptics question the true groundbreaking potential of VR, the adoption rate of this new technology seems to be on the rise.

Analyst firm Gartner has been keeping a close eye on emerging technologies for over 20 years. Their annual Hype Cycle research method visualizes the dynamics whereby new technologies emerge and develop. The chart predicts the evolution of emerging technologies in the IT and communication industries, separating the hype from industry drivers that actually evaluate their maturity, as well as commercial and business applicability.

The Hype Cycle usually includes five key phases of a technology’s life cycle:

• The first, known as the Innovation Trigger, marks the kickoff of a technology breakthrough followed by hype generated by the mass media. At this time, no significant usable products or commercial viability can be seen.
• The second stage, the Peak of Inflated Expectations, relates to early success stories and publicity. At this point, the curve starts to decline with the beginning of negative press coverage.
• In the third phase, the Trough of Disillusionment, interest in the initial breakthrough wanes as experiments and implementations fail.
• When the second and third generation products are launched and combined with a set of offered services, the technology reaches the Slope of Enlightenment. This is the stage in which new practices start developing pilots before they reach a high-growth adoption phase.
• When/if the technology reaches the Plateau of Productivity, mainstream adoption will take off; this is also the time when investments pay off.

Gartner’s findings built on data collected up until 2015 show that virtual reality has reached the Slope of Enlightenment, together with autonomous field vehicles and enterprise 3D printing. The Hype Cycle chart shows that it’s probably going to take another 5 to 10 years for virtual reality to go mainstream. In the short term, the development of VR is expected to continue and, according to tech experts, will be mostly driven by the gaming industry.

When it comes to architecture, five years ago it was easy to dismiss VR as another passing fad, but now it seems that VR may be here to stay. Though mainstream architecture firms are not known for their readiness to invest in new technologies, VR seems to be gathering momentum. Firms are starting to use VR both internally, as part of their design processes, as well as externally, in communication with clients.

CGarchitect’s Jeff Mottle claims that the future of the technology in architecture and ArchViz lies in its potential to provide scale and presence: “Two things that also neatly sum up what we feel when we experience architecture in the real world. This ability to experience a space we can’t visit, or one that does not yet exist, is the basis of nearly everything professionals in the field of architectural visualization do on a daily basis, so really VR is quite complementary and takes what we do to another level.”

One of the most important questions to ask when it comes to the future of VR is whether its evolution will be driven by pursuits for visual fidelity (image quality) or commercialization. Mottle believes that the technology is likely to develop in both directions, and stresses interactivity as its most important aspect for adding value. In the foreseeable future, the consumer space will play a crucial role in the evolution of the tool, but the high price tag seems the largest obstacle in a more widespread use of VR in architecture offices.

A recent survey conducted by CGarchitect, which focused on the architectural visualization industry, shows a rising adoption of VR in the last year. Around 69% of surveyed professionals are already using VR/AR/MR in their workflow or are planning to use it in the next two years. Though the survey included a relatively small number of respondents, its results provide a useful cross section of the industry and show an enthusiasm with which architects are welcoming VR.

Seattle-based NBBJ is one of the architecture firms that has had the most success in keeping step with technology. NBBJ developed their self-contained venture Visual Vocal to build a VR platform that was integrated into the firm’s design process. By using VR, NBBJ hopes to speed up collaboration and communication between designers and allow them to make decisions based on fast client feedback. The new productivity tool will allow architects to build VR versions of 3D models that can be explored on a smartphone.

Together with mobile and cloud-based solutions, VR is expected to replace conventional communication such as email. The team, led by John San Giovanni and Sean House, raised $500,000 for Visual Vocal, which will not only be developed as a solution for architecture, but for other industries as well. Future plans for the platform includes creating solutions for the aerospace industry, product design, and biotech.

For its new corporate headquarters in California, computer chip maker NVIDIA demonstrated VR’s potential on a completed building powered by NVIDIA products. The VR headsets allowed Gensler designers to navigate structural models and notice design flaws that might otherwise be missed in 2D environments. They also provided a more realistic view of how much light would enter the interior, and bounce off reflective surfaces or be absorbed.

While we’re waiting to see if VR assumes a more significant role in the architectural design process, those focused on creating architecture-related products might consider using VR to boost their marketing efforts. Global brands are already using VR to attract new customers. According to a new survey conducted by Greenlight Insights | Market Insights for Virtual & Augmented Reality, people are more likely to buy a product from a brand that uses VR, as this makes them appear more forward-thinking. The survey shows that 53% of responders are more likely to purchase products from brands that use VR than those that still haven’t adopted the technology.

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Do you think virtual reality has a future in architecture? How will it affect the way we design buildings and communicate with clients?

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