VRbanism: Assessing Virtual Reality as an Urban Design Tool

During the last few years, Virtual Reality (VR) technology has evolved at an impressive pace. The newest VR systems offer a high level of visual realism and accurate interaction with the virtual environment through spatially tracked controllers. This technology is increasingly being applied in many professions, but in architecture and urbanism the use of VR was mostly restricted to visualization purposes. Meanwhile, an increasing amount of (3D) data becomes available which is now mostly visualised with 2D screens, while there exists a plenitude of complex urban problems that could potentially benefit from the use of this data. Also, our cities are still mainly designed with traditional design methods such as sketches on paper and unintuitive CAD software. These methods are viewed on 2D screens, often from bird’s eye view, while our cities are in 3D and experienced from eye level perspective. Designing in VR could potentially bring the designer on eye level and connect the design with the world of available 3D data, offering a new, intuitive design method: 3D hand movements.This project focuses on the application of VR in an urban design process with current state of the art VR hard- and software. A design area was converted into a 3D virtual environment, a VR design tool was created and then used to create multiple design variants in VR. The lessons that were learned during this research form a first step towards new design methods, making use of the possibilities of software and immersion offered by VR.Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Urbanis