Collaborative Design Review Sessions In Virtual Reality: Multi-Scale And Multi-User

Paper in proceeding, 2022

The use of Virtual Reality (VR) for design reviews in projects is becoming more common in construction. However, the use of VR in these processes has been limited to been used more as a complementary reviewing tool alongside information medias such as 2D drawings and 3D models. Furthermore, immersive VR has been argued to have limitations when it comes to orientation and understanding and reasoning about functional links between physical layouts in a facility. This paper presents a case study of a VR system used during design reviews that support end-users to switch between
different representations and scale i.e., miniature model/bird-eye view, and a 1:1 scale experience of the facility. The data gathered, consisted of recorded observation of the VR based design review process and study what type of discussion and design errors that was found during two VR-workshops connected to a new elementary school. The result shows, that by supporting switching between miniature model and 1:1
scale VR experience facilitated spatial orientation and understanding and collaboration across disciplines in the project. The study also show how collaborative immersive VR can be used as an efficient communication-tool during the design process in a real-world project.