Diminished Reality in Architectural and Environmental design: Literature Review of Techniques, Applications, and Challenges

The development of new visualization technologies, such as Mixed Reality (MR) and Augmented Reality (AR), has enabled many applications to improve our daily life. For example, AR has been used in landscape assessment by overlaying virtual objects on a real-world scene to enhance the user's experience. For many advanced visualization scenarios, the virtual removal of objects is done to prevent their intermingling with the existing objects, which could lead to inaccurate visualizations. Diminished Reality (DR) is the technique of virtually removing and seeing through undesired objects in an environment in real-time. The main objective of this paper is to review recent studies to provide an overview of the main procedures, techniques, and applications of DR. In this regard, this paper investigates definitions of DR, its enabling technologies, and its potential applications. It also discusses the current challenges of using DR systems in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry.