News From Arch Virtual
The latest in architectural visualization and virtual reality application development.
Edmonton, Alberta, Replicating City in Second Life
In the capital of Canadian province Alberta, CIO Chris Moore is on a mission to recreate his city in the virtual world, where avatars roam and interact like they would in real life.
Architects in Cyberspace, or not
Texts written 20 years ago on architecture in cyberspace are as accurate and inspiring today as they were then, but where are the cyberspace architects now?
H-Town Goes Live! Incredible OpenSim-based neighborhood of real-world sustainable modern home prototypes opens to the public
H-Town, the OpenSim neighborhood previously posted HERE, is now open to the public! This is a most impressive application of building real-world architecture using the OpenSim platform, and by far the largest expanse of contiguous virtual land dedicated to it,...
Unity3D + OpenSim
I first read about the concept of mixing Unity and OpenSim through a post by epredator on his Life at the Feeding Edge, and always wondered if such an experiment would ever become reality. Rezzable recently announced that they had successfully achieved a prototype of...
Construction of Hurricane Katrina relief project ‘The Porchdog,’ prototyped in Second Life, now complete
Here are several before and after images of the 'Porchdog' residence, prototyped in Second Life by the Architecture in Virtual Worlds community. We built a virtual replica of this original design by Marlon Blackwell Architects, which was published to Open...
Construction of aLoft’s flagship hotels, first prototyped in Second Life, now complete
The headline-grabbing aLoft Hotel project, first prototyped in Second Life before construction started, can now be visited in the real world (and has been open for quite some time now). Starwood Hotels was the first to take their hotel's architectural concept into...
Real life construction completed on innovative homes prototyped in Second Life
If you have any interest or curiosity whatsoever about using Second Life or any other online, 3D, collaborative virtual environment for architectural prototyping or education, this is a must read success story. Construction has completed on designs first prototyped in...
Architectural Record features ‘Kansas to Cairo’ Second Life project
Egyptian and American architecture students recently completed a course using the virtual world Second Life to facilitate long distance collaboration within an online, realtime 3D environment. With funding from the U.S. State Department, California-based...
Mesh Imports Coming to Second Life Q2 2010
Today, Linden Lab announced that mesh imports, or the ability to import models created in external 3D modeling apps will be available for beta testing Q2 2010. For architects and other AEC professionals and educators, this has been the long awaited 'holy grail' for...
TEN Arquitectos design for Rutgers Business School prototyped in Second Life and OpenSim (machinima)
A virtual prototype of the proposed Rutgers Business School, designed by the internationally renowned architecture firm TEN Arquitectos (frequently covered by arcspace), will soon be opening in Second Life - commissioned by Rutgers University. A larger, more detailed...
FINAL POWER-CHARRETTE! Studio Wikitecture enters the final lap in the Safe Trestles competition entry.
Can Studio Wikitecture win this thing?!? They've done it before, and they could do it again, but not without your help! The final entry is due Saturday, April 17th, but it definitely isn't too late to join in the action and be sure your name is on the contributing...
Building with shadows in Second Life: the prim is (still) mightier than the pen
For the longest time, I had given up on the possibility of using shadows persistently in Second Life, given that it crashed my viewer so often it wasn't worth the hassle. But since enabling shadows in the new viewer 2.0, I haven't crashed yet! While shadows...
Google Street View in 3D
While working on an architectural replication project in Second Life recently, I was using Google Street View to gain a better understanding of the building's as-built exterior (where blueprints and CAD files fall short) and noticed that the street view pegman had a...
Facebook and the Future of CAD
I have a rather embarrassing confession to make, but I want to admit it before someone else calls me on it. During the last half of 2009, I was seriously addicted to Farmville. There is no excuse, but in all fairness, it happened during the holiday season, when my...
Welcome to H-Town, OpenSim used to create a virtual neighborhood of sustainable modern houses
Hometta, a collective of award-winning architecture and design studios, will soon be launching an opensim-based grid called 'H-Town,' showcasing a virtual neighborhood modeled after the innovative, modern house plans they sell on their website. With Hometta's stated...
![Importing Revit into Unity [Update]](https://archvirtual.com/wp-content/uploads/unity3-1024x781.jpg)
Importing Revit into Unity [Update]
A few weeks ago, I wrote about using the Unity3D game develop engine to import Revit Architecture models. I've since upgraded to Unity Pro, opening the doors to some even more powerful features. I really haven't had a lot of time to spend on this, but I couldn't...