The Promise and Problems of Implementing Virtual Reality in Construction Practice

Virtual reality (VR) can be used as a powerful tool to extend the possibilities of visualising the built environment before construction. This paper describes work conducted at Loughborough University in collaboration with a leading British housing developer, and highlights the need to balance the differing agendas of academic research and the competitive modern workplace. Through consultation with our industrial partner the potential of VR to contribute to design generation, consultation with planners and product marketing was identified. A prototype project raised important issues relating to the smooth transfer of VR techniques from research into practice in the building industry. The major technological issue, addressed by this paper, is the inherently different structure of CAD and VR models. As CAD packages often determine the way in which three dimensional geometric data is stored in the building industry, the present differences between CAD and VR systems lead to both implementation and data transfer problems. Construction companies are inhibited from using virtual reality as the overlap between CAD and VR skills is insufficient, with building professionals remaining unfamiliar with VR concepts. Transfer of data from CAD to VR systems is problematic. Three different strategies for overcoming this problem are described. These are: to build a library of standard parts within the VR system; to rely on imperfect model conversion from CAD to VR through translators; or to use VR and CAD as interfaces to a central database. Advances in CAD technology and the emerging standards for data transfer will facilitate integration of CAD and VR data. Whilst our prototype project demonstrates the potential of Virtual Reality in practice, further work on improving the compatibility of CAD and VR systems is necessary before widespread industrial acceptance and commercial viability are attainable.