The Experience of Space in Full-Scale Models and Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality has great potential to become a usable design tool for the planning of light and colour in buildings. The technical development has provided us with better computer graphics and faster rendering techniques. However, the reliability and usability is delimited by lack of knowledge about how humans perceive spatial colour phenomena. The setting up of parameters for material properties in light calculation software is done arbitrarily. We present a comparison between a real room and a digital model evaluated on a desktop PC and in an Immersive Projection Technology (IPT) type system. Data were collected from video recorded interviews and questionnaires. The participants assessed the appearance of light, colours and space. They also evaluated their involvement in solving this task, and their presence in each environment. Our results highlight the benefits and disadvantages of the real and virtual models. The participants had difficulties in estimating the size of both the desktop room and the room in the ITP system. The comparison of real and virtual rooms revealed unsatisfying differences in shadowing and colour appearance. We defined the magnitude of perceived colour reflections in the real room, and elaborated with some of the parameters in Lightscape/3dsmax6.

Human Vision and Electronic Imaging IX, 2004

Virtual Reality has great potential to become a usable design tool for the planning of light and colour in buildings. The technical development has provided us with better computer graphics and faster rendering techniques. However, the reliability and usability is delimited by lack of knowledge about how humans perceive spatial colour phenomena. The setting up of parameters for material properties in light calculation software is done arbitrarily. We present a comparison between a real room and a digital model evaluated on a desktop PC and in an Immersive Projection Technology (IPT) type system. Data were collected from video recorded interviews and questionnaires. The participants assessed the appearance of light, colours and space. They also evaluated their involvement in solving this task, and their presence in each environment. Our results highlight the benefits and disadvantages of the real and virtual models. The participants had difficulties in estimating the size of both the desktop room and the room in the ITP system. The comparison of real and virtual rooms revealed unsatisfying differences in shadowing and colour appearance. We defined the magnitude of perceived colour reflections in the real room, and elaborated with some of the parameters in Lightscape/3dsmax6.

Architekturen, 2022

Since a few years back, the postgraduate master degree studio Architecture and Aesthetic Practice at Städelschule Architecture Class in Frankfurt has used virtual reality (VR) as an experimental laboratory for exploring architectural questions pertaining to the phenomenon and our experience of space. These experiments have comprised of designing novel, immersive environments where architecture has been explored through the computerised representation of forms and spaces. This digitally produced realm of images supplement and often supplant the traditional role of drawing in the contemporary design process. In the studio, the image content has been variously generated by engaging with urban conditions and media-culture, digital systems of image production and surveillance, human perception and the formation of subjective reality, and-last but not leastdisciplinary concerns in architecture. In sum, the experiments have explored aesthetic realms and modes of representation that only recently have emerged given a more efficient digital technology that in VR can be used for novel architectural design opportunities and to simulate how architecture is experienced.

2023

The present study aims to investigate aesthetic experience in response to environments with curvilinear boundaries in two different virtual environments (VEs), namely immersive (IVE) and desktop-based virtual environments (DTVE). To this end, 60 participants were presented with 360-degree 32 VE visualizations that had horizontal or vertical curved boundaries and possessed various architectural properties including size, light, texture, and color, using a headmounted display and a desktop computer. The aesthetic experience was measured in terms of three key dimensions identified before (Elver Boz et al., 2022): familiarity, excitement, and fascination. In addition, participants' sense of presence was measured. The results show that familiarity and excitement dimensions were significantly higher in IVE than in DTVE, whereas the two environments did not differ from each other in terms of fascination. As for the boundary types, familiarity was significantly higher in horizontal boundaries than in vertical ones. In contrast, excitement and fascination were significantly higher in vertical than in horizontal boundaries. The only dimension that showed an interaction between the boundary and the virtual environment was excitement. Finally, IVE induced a higher presence feeling than DTVE. These results have important implications for researchers who study aesthetic experiences using immersive virtual reality or 2D images.

Master thesis in Pedagogics, 2019

This master thesis investigates how are sensory experiences (moving, seeing, touching, hearing) made relevant for visitors to a virtual reality (VR) architectural exhibition. The study proposes that to be able to make sensory experiences relevant for visitors we need to understand 1) how visitors make their sensory experiences relevant 2) how others can support in the process 3) what the study results mean in relation to designing meaningful VR environments. To answer the research question, this study utilizes the data gathered in a research project The Forest in the house, where study participants explore a large VR installation set in the National architecture museum in Oslo and describe their sensory experiences in an interview conducted after the exploring. The Forest in the House had a diverse set of museum visitors. Participants’ ages varied from children to seniors, and they had different levels of expertise from non-experts, to architecture students, and professional architects. Together 18 pairs were recruited and partners in each pair took turns to explore the VR installation and acted as a guide to their partner. The data analysis was conducted with thematic analysis and looked for five main themes. The first theme was how participants construct new meanings and utilize learned meanings when verbally sharing sensory experiences. The second, third and fourth themes were: what presence, imagination and meaningful engagement mean in relation to participants´ sensory experiences in VR. The fifth theme was how feelings relate to making sensory experiences in VR relevant. Taken together, the theory and the results of the study show, that sensory experiences are made relevant for visitors to a virtual reality architectural exhibition by 1) taking feelings into consideration when reflecting the VR experience, 2) comparing the sensory experience with previous sensory experiences, 3) understanding stimuli from different senses as intertwined, 4) concentrating on the sensory experience and communicating it verbally, and 5) reflecting what is meaningful and how to regulate presence. The study concludes that communicating sensory experiences in VR requires deliberate practice in utilizing language to describe sensory experiences.

ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, 2006

Improving the sense of "presence" is a common goal of three-dimensional (3D) display technology for film, television, and virtual reality. However, there are instances in which 3D presentations may elicit unanticipated negative responses. For example, it is well established that violations of interpersonal space cause discomfort in real-world situations. Here we ask if people respond similarly when viewing life-sized stereoscopic images. Observers rated their level of comfort in response to animate and inanimate objects in live and virtual (stereoscopic projection) viewing conditions. Electrodermal activity was also recorded to monitor their physiological response to these stimuli. Observers exhibited significant negative reactions to violations of interpersonal space in stereoscopic 3D displays, which were equivalent to those experienced in the natural environment. These data have important implications for the creation of 3D media and the use of virtual reality systems.

2002

In this paper, we examine the perception and understanding of spatial volumes within immersive, non-immersive virtual environments and physical models and their translation to a tangible representation in a series of design-representation experiments. Students experienced, assessed, and analysed spatial relationships of volumes and spaces and subsequently constructed models of these spaces. The goal of our study is to identify how designers perceive space in Virtual Environments (VE). We explore issues of quality, accuracy and understanding of rebuilding architectural experienced. By comparison of the same task within a screen-based or real 2D realm, we are able to draw some conclusions about aspects particular to immersive VE activity.

1997

As human-machine interfaces grow more immersive and graphically-oriented, virtual environment systems become more prominent as the medium for humanmachine communication. Often, virtual environments (VE) are built to provide exact metrical representations of existing or proposed physical spaces. H owever, it is not known how individu als develop representational models of these spaces in which they are immersed and how those models may be distorted with respect to both the virtual and real-world equivalents. To evaluate the process of model development, the present experiment examined participant's ability to reproduce a complex spatial layout of objects having experienced them previously under diOEerent viewing conditions. The layout consisted of nine common objects arranged on a¯at plane. These objects could be viewed in a free binocular virtual condition, a free binocular real-world condition, and in a static monocular view of the real world. The ®rst two allowed active exploration of the environment while the latter condition allowed the participant only a passive opportunity to observe from a single viewpoint. Viewing conditions were a between-subject variable with 10 participants randomly assigned to each condition. Performance was assessed using mapping accuracy and triadic comparisons of relative inter-object distances. M apping results showed a signi®cant eOEect of viewing condition where, interestingly, the static monocular condition was superior to both the active virtual and real binocular conditions. Results for the triadic comparisons showed a signi®cant interaction for gender by viewing condition in which males were more accurate than females. These results suggest that the situation model resulting from interaction with a virtual environment was indistinguishable from interaction with real objects at least within the constraints of the present procedure.

eCAADe proceedings

The Perceptions of Depth and Distance are considered as two of the most important factors in Virtual Reality Environments, as these environments inevitability impact the perception of the virtual content compared with the one of real world. Many studies on depth and distance perceptions in a virtual environment exist. Most of them were conducted using Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) and less with large screen displays such as those of Cave Automatic Virtual Environments (CAVEs). In this paper, we make a comparison between the different aspects of perception in the architectural environment between CAVE systems and HMD. This paper clarifies the Virtual Object as an entity in a VE and also the pros and cons of using CAVEs and HMDs are explained. Eventually, just a first survey of the planned case study of the artificial port of the Trajan emperor near Fiumicino has been done as for COVID-19 an on-field experimentation could not have been performed.

2002

The paper describes the main themes of a recently funded research project under the European Community's Future and Emerging Technologies 'Presence' initiative. The aim of the research is to develop new tools for empirical and theoretical studies of presence based on the concept of the observer's embodiment in the computationally created virtual environment. The approach will be based on true-to-life visual and auditory information presented in real-time. These will utilise a range of projection technologies from Head Mounted Displays to a six sided CAVE. The project will undertake a series of empirical investigations into the experience of 'being there' in relation to real places and objects. Analysis of presence will be at the level of psychological, physiological and neurological. At this early stage of the research four themes are presented: acquisition and real time rendering of real places; augmentation of such representations; psychophysiological aspects of presence and establishing a sense of place and embodiment. 7 References Benjamin, W. (1997) Charles Baudelaire Verso: London Borden, I. (2001) Skateboarding, space and the city: Architecture and the Body, Berg, Oxford and New York.