Low-Cost Virtual Reality Environment for Engineering and Construction

Presenting significant building or engineering 3D-models is a crucial part of the planning, construction and maintenance phases in terms of collaboration and understanding. Especially in complex or large-scale models, immersion is one of the major key factors for being able to intuitively perceive all aspects of the scene. A fully immersive system needs to give the user a large field-of-view (FOV) with reduced latency for lifelike impression. Technologies such as VR-walls and shutter glasses can deliver high refresh rates, yet fail to give a large FOV. Head-mounted-devices (HMD) for virtual reality (VR) fill this gap. Head tracking mechanisms translate movements of the user's head into virtual camera movements and enable a natural way of examining models. In contrast to a stereoscopic representation with projectors, point-of-view tracking can be achieved separately for each individual HMD user. Hardware costs for such systems were very high in the past, but have dropped due to virtual reality systems now gaining traction in the mainstream gaming community. In this paper we present a way to build a low-cost, highly immersive virtual reality environment for engineering and construction applications. Using the Oculus Rift HMD and the Leap Motion hand-tracking device, we show the possibilities of naturally interacting within a virtual space in different use cases. The software, based on the popular game engine Unreal Engine 4 (UE4), will be used as a basis for further research and development.