Imagine dropping a camera into an architectural model, and immediately walking through the design in stunning, photorealistic quality, with no lag, and the highest possible quality settings – on an old, low end machine?
Cloud-based rendering has the capacity to turn this dream into a reality. Instead of the 2 or 3 frames per second I can get with the built-in ‘orbit’ and ‘walk’ functions within Revit, at the lowest quality, with no shadows – imagine 40 or 50 frames per second, at the very highest possible rendering quality? I’ve had the opportunity to experiment with a variety of cloud-based rendering services during the past few weeks, and am totally convinced that the future of realtime 3D – the concentration of this blog – will soon be taking massive strides with this technology.
There will be a lot more news to come – but for now, check out the video below of Blue Mars, the 3D CryEngine-based world and social game platform, now running on OTOY‘s cloud-streaming service on multiple platforms. Imagine tying something like this into BIMserver, or any architectural model, where the realtime virtual experience becomes the outward expression of the behind-the-scenes parametric data of the building information model. Imagine anyone, anywhere, in realtime – being able to experience the combined AEC data in a unified experience, at photorealistic quality, on any kind of hardware or handheld device.
A lot of what you’ll hear about cloud-based computing from an AEC perspective deals exclusively with data retrieval, or desktop-based applications that operate from the cloud. Cadalyst covered it in a 2-part series earlier this year, ‘Cloud-based CAD,’ and AEC Bytes has an informative article about cloud-based computing as well, BIM and the Cloud. But what excites me most is the potential for realtime, photorealistic 3D experience of architectural and urban design concepts, rendered in the cloud, and how this newfound accessibility to the unbuilt, conceptual realm can greatly enhance the quality, efficiency and eventual augmentation of architecture and the built environment.
Find more information about Blue Mars cloud-streamed rendering with OTOY on TechCrunch and definitely stay tuned to Wagner James Au’s new Blue World Notes blog.
