Advanced Building Simulation

Immersive building simulation 243
gesture recognition that will allow the user to interact with the raw data of the CFD
simulation. In addition, statistical filters are being deployed to reduce noise and
achieve better smoothing to allow a higher degree of registration and real-time data
visualization.
9.4 Conclusions
This chapter discussed the background of immersive building simulation and its
challenges. It introduced the elements that are crucial in the development of a simulation
environment that is still in its infancy stage. The few studies that were conducted
in this area illustrate the potential application of such research. Major
challenges still exist in regard to the software and hardware, as well as the knowledge
required to bring this to the building simulation field. These challenges are
● Hardware cost: The cost of hardware required to develop immersive building simulation
environments is still high and few vendors provide this specialty hardware.
● Expertise: Different expertise is required to construct such environments. This
requires collaborative effort between a variety of researchers.
● Interaction methods: Human–computer interface for immersion environments
and buildings is not available. Interaction methods need to be developed in order
to take advantage of the immersion component.
● Sensor technology: Actual building conditions through sensor data and simulated
behavior through simulation models can inform each other, but integration of
sensors and simulation needs to be further developed.
● Data visualization: Developing data reduction and enhancement techniques that
can be used for real-time dynamic simulation is needed.
● Software: Software that supports building simulation objects and methods is not
available. Using existing methods is a challenging task even for simple operations.
For example, translating information from the CFD simulation to the
CAVE required interface mapping and the CAVE language is also restrictive
regarding the primitives it uses. Only basic shapes can be used, such as cubes or
spheres. Thus it makes it difficult to map information with complex shapes to the
output of the CFD simulations.
● Incorporation with building product models: To allow robust and fast development
standards for data communications need to be developed.
Despite these challenges, immersive environments provide opportunities that are
not available using current simulation models and interactions. These environments
prove the potential for their use in collaboration. For example, using the CAVE
allowed multi-users to virtually navigate through a 3D environment and share information
regarding its performance.
Immersive simulation extends on the 3D performance information visualization of
buildings and permits the user to interact with the real environment and visualize the
reaction of this interaction. It presents a new way of interfacing with the built environment
and controlling its behavior in real-time. This will become evident as more
techniques such as optimization and knowledge-based systems, etc. give these