News From Arch Virtual
The latest in architectural visualization and virtual reality application development.
Chris Luebkeman, ARUP, Virtual Installation of ‘Drivers of Change’
Chris Luebkeman, ARUP, gave a presentation of his 'Drivers of Change' concept in the virtual world platform Second Life during the opening of this installation, sponsored by Autodesk Island. To visit this installation, click the link below then click ‘Sign Up’ in...
Cameron Sinclair, Architecture for Humanity, Virtual World Model of a Hurricane Relief Project
Cameron Sinclair, founder of Architecture for Humanity, visits 'the Virtual Porchdog,' a replica of a hurricane relief project. Here are two videos, one of his virtual presentation, and the other showing construction progress on the virtual model.
Virtual Autodesk Island
Autodesk Island has been online on the Second Life platform since 2006, and was originally designed and built by Clear Ink to help showcase virtual environments during Autodesk University. To visit Autodesk Island, click the link below then click 'Sign Up' in the...
Introducing The ARCH Network
The virtual winds of change are blowing, and its time to re-activate, refresh, and re-invent many of the various efforts associated with this blog, Architecture Islands, the in-world RL Architects group, and more. In the days ahead, I plan to introduce a more...
Congratulations to the Winners & Future Plans for Studio Wikitecture
Cross post from the Studio Wikitecture blog: A Big Congratulations goes out to the following contributors to the University of Alabama's Virtual Classroom Project. After two rounds of voting the following spreadsheet illustrates the breakdown down in winnings. As...
The Architecture of Virtual Education
Here is a video of the presentation I gave last weekend at the VWBPE convention , posted by tree.tv, in both a streaming format and high-def download, available here: http://www.treet.tv/shows/bpe/bpe2009_varchitecture_27mar09/ Other presentations captured by Tree.tv...
Invite to the Living Sketchbook: Architecture Students Working on an Urban Intervention for Non Profit Commons
Don't miss this! It is TONIGHT, Monday March 30th between 5pm and 8pm SLT. This project is sure to become a bar-raising effort for demonstrating the benefits of using virtual worlds in architectural education. I'm aware of at least 14 architecture schools from...
Beautiful Browsers: Therapy for the Mainstream
Everywhere I turn these days, someone is reminding me that virtual worlds like Second Life or Opensim will never reach 'mainstream' adoption until everyday ordinary web users can access them through special plug-ins downloaded for those precious 2d web browsers we...
ARCHviews: Kirsten Kiser, Editor-in-Chief of arcspace.com
Welcome to ARCHviews, a new podcast format where I take to the streets of the metaverse and talk with architects and designers exploring architecture of all forms - real or virtual. Today I talk to Kirsten Kiser, editor-in-chief of arcspace.com about her experience...
Worlds merging: A video response from X3D
A few weeks ago, I posted a video showing how my Revit model was imported into realxtend by Visibuild. It generated lots of interest and traffic, suggesting to me that model interoperability is an important priority for lots of us. Shortly after posting that my...
The prim is mightier than the pen: The emergence of living sketchbooks
I had a professor in architecture school who taught a 'Drawing in Architecture' class, and talked a lot about the importance of sketching. The basis of his argument was that the process of sketching an architectural form results in the shortest possible conduit from...
More from the AIA about virtual worlds
Last week, I wrote about MellaniuM's use of the Unreal engine in architectural visualization. Yesterday, the American Insitute of Architect's newsletter AIArchitect covers another story about virtual worlds, this time about HKS's decision to license the most recent...
Architecture For Humanity Enters the 3D Web
"This is an introduction by Lauren Stokes to Architecture For Humanity's own interactive digital globe that will host models from their Open Architecture Network. Using X3D Earth and Open Street Map, web3D students sponsored by GeoSherpa are helping Architecture For...
Models from Revit Imported into a Multi-User, Realtime, Collaborative Virtual World
It happened exactly 1 year, to the day I first contacted Jani Pirkola former project manager of the Realxtend team. I heard rumors late in 2007 that they had goals to accelerate the development of the 'opensim' platform, and one of their priorities was 3D model...
Virtual architecture trumping physical counterparts [updated]
We're no longer talking just about augmenting physical reality. Many virtual spaces are effectively replacing the use of entire physical buildings and spaces they would otherwise occupy. Not only that, but they are performing better and saving companies big money....
Hanging up the old shoehorn: Stunning realtime multi-user architectural visualization in a web browser
Are browser-based virtual environments the way of the future for virtual design visualization? Here is a brief overview of 4 of the many emerging platforms or related services to watch, and some thoughts about how they fit into the bigger picture of virtual worlds...