What’s Your VR + Architecture Strategy?
Virtual Reality, once a curiosity for architectural use, has quickly become an indispensable tool for designing, constructing, developing, and finishing interiors of architectural projects all over the world.
Virtual Reality, once a curiosity for architectural use, has quickly become an indispensable tool for designing, constructing, developing, and finishing interiors of architectural projects all over the world.
Almost three decades before Building Information Modeling (BIM) would go mainstream, the term “Virtual Building” was used in the earliest implementation of BIM through Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD debut in 1987. Since then, the concept hasn’t changed, but visualization technology has advanced to the point where designers, engineers, contractors, and building owners can become so immersed in the virtual building model that they feel as if they’re actually there. Technologies like the Unity3D game engine and the new $300 Oculus Rift virtual reality headset are making it possible.
The next 3 new clients who hire Arch Virtual to create a real-time application of their architectural project will receive the service at a 25% off discounted rate. Additionally, every new project through the end of the year will receive a free upgrade to an additional Oculus Rift compatible application.
Oculus Rift demo download link! We’re hard at work ironing out the pipeline and workflow between Revit and Unity3D, publishing real-time architectural visualization projects that can be accessed on a simple web browser. Being able to publish the same build out to Oculus Rift is the icing on the virtual cake, where we can explore designs in immersive 3D.
Oculus Rift completely changes the game. The very instant I stepped inside of our Revit model, I realized just how different the ‘in-world’ experience was from the drawings we were producing! It was a night and day difference.
The technologies and demand for realtime 3D visualization in architectural design and urban planning will almost certainly be commonplace in the years ahead, but realizing the full breadth of what is possible when realtime 3D is combined with multi-user, online user-generated environments will require a paradigm shift.