The virtual environments lighting quality assessment using the virtual reality

The computer simulation field opened up new application opportunities in architecture in the last decades. In particular, Virtual Reality (VR) and Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) enable to study the subjective experience in-vitro. This paper investigates the ability of VR coupled with immersive devices in providing users with a better spatial lighting understanding. The goal is to reason about the potentiality of VR and IVE on the lighting quality assessment studies involving final users. The research was carried out by analysing and comparing data of the spatial and lighting perception of users using conventional devices frequently used by researchers in the lighting field for running experiments: screens, video projectors, and VR. Three different virtual lighting conditions in a virtual environment were presented, and a survey was administered to twenty-six participants. Results show that immersive VR allows obtaining more significant correlations between lightning variables than the other devices. Besides, the statistical analyses highlight that VR navigation with immersive devices is associated with an overall better lightning perception of the virtual model than the other non-immersive devices tested in the experimentation. The findings also show that users prefer the immersive environment