Advanced Building Simulation

Immersive building simulation 221
Environments have been used in a variety of areas in relation to buildings. This
includes the extension of visual perception by enabling the user to see through or into
objects (Klinker et al. 1998) such as maintenance support for visualizing electrical
wires in a wall or construction grids (Retik et al. 1998). Other applications include
structural system visualization (Fiener et al. 1995), augmented outdoor visualization
(Berger et al. 1999), collaborative design process (Frost and Warren 2000), and client
servicing (Neil 1996). The visualization of some of these applications becomes more
useful when these environments are associated with other techniques that increase
their efficiency such as knowledge-based systems (Stalker and Smith 1998).
For immersive building simulation, only a few projects have been developed—some
of which are related to the post-processing of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
data (Shahnawaz et al. 1999; Malkawi and Primikiri 2002) augmented simulations
(Malkawi and Choudhary 1999); building and data representation (Pilgrim et al. 2001);
building performance visualization (Linden et al. 2001; Malkawi and Choudhary 1999)
and immersive visualization for structural analysis (Rangaraju and Tek 2001; Impelluso
1996). Most of the available tools provide a one- or two-dimensional representation of
the data derived from a building performance simulation. This has always been an
important challenge as only experts can precisely understand the data and hence are
always required to interpret them. Consequently, this introduces the problems of time
and cost, not only in terms of hiring these experts, but also in establishing communication
among the participants. This communication is not only dependent on their
physical presence. It also involves issues of representation as well as of semantics.
Immersive building simulation requires specialty hardware and software (Figure 9.1).
The hardware includes the display, tracking and interaction devices. For display, immersive
simulation requires a Head-Mounted Display (HMD), a Binocular Omni-
Orientation Monitor (BOOM), or other peripheral hardware that allow user
interaction and perception to be altered using the synthetic environment. The HMD is
a helmet or partial helmet that holds the visual and auditory systems. Other immersive
systems use multiple projection displays to create a room that will allow many users to
interact in the virtual world. Several technologies are used for the tracking—such as
mechanical, electromagnetic, ultrasonic, inertial, and optical. The interaction can be
View
Render geometry
Interaction
Tracker data & location
Simulation
Thermal, lighting, etc.
Display
HMD, BOOM, CAVE, etc.
Trackers
Magnetic, acoustics, etc.
Interaction devices
Cyberglove, etc.
Software Hardware
Figure 9.1 Immersive building simulation—hardware and software dependencies.
Space